Jaci Dawn

I am going nuts. It isn’t not having a computer necessarily that is driving this, but the fact that I bruised my right knee somehow and I can’t do much in the way of bending or kneeling or climbing stairs. It’s better tonight (lots of ice), but the past few days (Sunday, Monday and today), I have been relegated to something akin to bed rest.

I need to go up and clean my studio so I can do something, but that means a lot of kneeling & bending. Nix that.

I can’t sit at my computer upstairs because it is… dead.

I read one book but I am loathe to start another.

The truth is: I can’t sit still that long any more.

I’ve watched several episodes of an obscure Fox Network television series on Netflix (“Firefly” – can’t imagine how I missed it back when it aired except to say we don’t watch much Fox TV). And I hate sitting still to watch TV.

So while Don is sitting here watching NCIS tonight and I can’t do anything kinesthetic, I find myself – Lost.

I have a great idea! Share some of Don’s photos from his week off hunting. He did not bring me home a chukar, but he took some great photos. (He did kill some but he ate on the road. I can understand: the logistics of bringing a dead bird home to his poor wife are daunting: he’d have to keep it on ice and ice melts in coolers. Oh well. Next year he’ll bring me home a chukar to eat…)

Birds and boredom aside, I have to choose what photos to share. Well, that isn’t terribly hard. Don took some great photos of bullsnakes.

We believe you never harm a bullsnake.They are great rodent hunters and they’re beautiful. Really beautiful. Well, you never harm any snake, even a pit viper like a rattlesnake – so long as you can avoid it. I mean avoid the snake and avoid harming it.

OK, maybe the average person doesn’t think so, but I do. Look at that beautiful pattern.

Bullsnakes often imitate rattlesnakes, even going so far as to shake their tail in a false “rattle”. I’ve never seen it. I’m just telling you what I have read. The snakes Don saw didn’t want to leave the warmth of the road they were on and he had to prod them off with a stick.

What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that a bullsnake was once nearly the death of me. Really. My family still laughs about it. I get no respect.

We were making our way around the perimeter of Borax Lake, walking in ankle-deep salt grass. Snakes love grass. Snakes in the desert really love grass: it is cool.

I was repeating my Mom-Mantra: “Watch For Snakes.” My children were blithely ignoring me and happily plodding through the grass. I was eyeballing every step.

And I still nearly stepped on the head of a Very Large Snake with a diamond pattern skin. I froze. Time froze. My heart skipped several beats. Then I realized the head was blunt and round, not triangular.

Damn bullsnake.

I let the snake cross underneath my feet and began to breathe again.

But that was the only one that ever startled me to that degree.