.410

As a small boy I always remember having toy guns. Sometimes they were toy pistols which were meant to be "cowboy" guns as we played cowboys and Indians all of the time. I didn't have to grow very old before I came to the realization that the Indians  were not the bad guys after all. Grandmama proudly declared to me at a very young age that I was part Indian. She and her children had the look of an Indian and I've always accepted it as fact that we indeed are at least partially of Indian descent. Some of our ancestry came from North Carolina and I imagine that was where our blood became mixed.
    
At any rate as a small boy I was drawn to the outdoors especially the swamp which was not more than a hundred yards from our backyard. Children then were not indoor creatures, especially little boys. I had the benefit of an older brother exactly ten years older than me who taught me quickly where the limits were to my adventures. To this day I spend quality "think time" at the very spot where Homer first left me alone in the woods. That spot is sacred to me and it is where I go for sunrise every Easter. I am speaking of the corner of the lower of two ponds which I share ownership with the school board as it is the storm water detention complex for the Liberty County high school.

I imagine that I was probably about four or maybe five that first time Homer took me hunting with him. He took me with him only because Mama made him do it. He cut the outing short because soon after he left me at the waters edge I became restless. We were at the northeastern corner of the rear field of the Quarterman estate. We were taught to respect the owners of neighboring property and skirt around fences until we got to the edge of the swamp. Once at the edge of the swamp we either skirted around or walked along the trunks of fallen trees which conveniently formed bridges across the swamp. I thought little of wading out into water above my knees at an early age. There were a few places in the swamp where the water might be three or more feet deep but not many and they were not large in area.

In my youth there were never any alligators seen in the Goshen by myself or reported by anyone else. The gators came after the swamp was channelized in 1974. The first ones ever reported were in the ponds created by Judge Fraser which are located at the swamps intersection with the highway. I believe I have lost one beloved little dog to the gators and I don't want to experience that again.  About the only  wild game critters seen in my early years were Deer, Turkey, Squirrel, Rabbit and many kinds of birds.

There always has been a presence of snakes of many varieties but mostly moccasins  There was as I recall only an occasional rattlesnake. It was our custom to kill any and all snakes up until I closed the Corner bar and built my barn. I was at that time almost fifty and I had experienced a change of attitude about non poisonous snakes. I had learned that some snakes were actually a benefit to have around. The yellow corn snake, or commonly called the garter snake, is especially peaceful and a thing of beauty. About twenty years ago I encountered one near the barn and he and my dog Samboling as well as myself learned to be tolerant of each other's presence  I soon named the snake SS for sneaky snake. There were many chance encounters and he ultimately took up residence inside an old draft beer cooler which I have stored in the barn. Many times I watched him lay across the path before me and Sam and we simply stepped over him. Our presence did not seem to bother him. Mama never really liked the idea of allowing any snake to escape the .410.
       
 I remember one day when it was extremely hot and I walked past a large plastic tub which sat out behind the barn and was full of rainwater,  I noticed SS's nose sticking up at the water's surface. He had decided to cool it in the tub of water. There were many such encounters.  Mama never really liked SS and in the end she had her way with him. It was only about a month or so after her death that I discovered the original SS shortly after his death in Mama's barn. In those first few weeks after Mama's death I often spent hours during the day just poking around in her storage buildings as well as the house. That was my way of enduring my grief over her death and I still enjoy some time doing that even now. I learned at a very young age the pain of the lose of a very close loved one. The grief at first is almost overwhelming but in fact it is not that. Eventually one finds closure and there is comfort in that. At any rate one sunny morning around Thanksgiving I found myself in Mama's back yard and something compelled me to go and open the barn door. Right before me lay the remains of SS entangled in the netting which Mama had taken off of her strawberry plants. The net was for protecting the strawberry fruit from birds. Well SS had stuck his head through it and then could not get back out of it. He had only been dead for a matter of hours as his body though lifeless was still  vibrant and flexible. I looked at him and could not help but think about Mama and her having her way after all. I stood there almost in tears thinking about my Mama but slowly I broke into a huge smile as I turned my gaze upward toward the pecan trees and in my mind I could here her words "Well God's little critters need to keep their ass out of my Pecan trees".

Those words were Mama's immediate response sometime a few years earlier after I questioned her regarding the sound of the shotgun several times early one morning and instantly heard the sound of the shot as it fell around me as I was about two or three hundred feet from where Mama was with the gun. A short time later I joined Mama for a brief visit and I inquired about the gunshots earlier and she said she had been shooting the squirrels in the pecan trees. I said to her, Mama you should not be shooting God's little critters. She immediately responded "Well God's little critters need to keep their ass out of my pecan trees".  She could be a woman of few words but she said what was on her mind. And she meant it also.  I stood looking at the remains of Sneaky Snake and could not help but think well God's little critter should have stayed out of her barn and he would not have become trapped in the net. Such is life and death of God's critters.