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 2001-2010 |
File Identification:Outlaw-192 | Date Scanned:ephotos | Source of Scanned Image: | |
| Original Source of Image:W.H. Outlaw Jr. | Digital Archiver: | Image Restorer: | ||
| Original Image Size: | Scan Resolution (dpi) (Reduced files=200 dpi):300 | Exact Date of Original Image:December 10, 2007 | ||
| Estimated Date of Original Image: | Basis for Date Estimate: | Unreduced File Size(px): | ||
| Location:W.H. Outlaw Farm, Nashville, Georgia | Background:15-acre field | Activity: | ||
| Unreduced File Size(MB): | Reduced File Size (px):800 x 200 | Reduced File Size (KB):268 | ||
| Information with Photo: | ||||
| Subjects:Crotalus sp. aka rattlesnake | ||||
| Comments:This guy brought a flood of disparate thoughts to my mind, with topics ranging too widely to fit into a linear sequence. So, what follows are thoughts that do not make a coherent whole. With this warning, read on if you wish. The last tobacco barn on my farm had finally fallen and Mama permitted the fire department to use it for practice. Still, there was a good bit of debris (some logs, tin, and myriad items that had been stored under it, ranging from propane burners (the 3d and final furnace system) to the old castings used for kerosene burners (the 2d furnace system) to a lawn mower--you name it). In short, it was a veritable hotel for various critters. When Michael Bailey pushed it out of the way for my ag storage building, the debris was home to a skunk, an opossum and a rattlesnake--I guess that pretty well covers stinky, ugly, and dangerous. Within a couple of weeks, Michael was back over to pull some discarded junk from the woods to a staging ground for final transport to a landfill. (I can't tell you how much I hate discards being thrown into somebody's woods.) After Mama was unable to properly supervise work, she contracted with a timber man to thin out her hardwoods. To make a long story short, he discarded a differential for a skidder and a large tire in the woods (See Supplemental Image A), and ran over a well curbing and broke it off. At about the same time, cypress disappeared and Sam and I surmised that this timber man gave himself a hefty bonus. The moral to the story, of course, is that one should never hire someone if he or she is unable to supervise, a lesson I have had reinforced over and over and over. Getting back to the thread, the snake in the main image had bedded up for the winter in the tire and when Michael moved the tire, the snake was aroused. Water in the tire wet him and when he was removed from the tire, the dry sand coated him. . . . not a pretty sight, but better than a beautiful and lively rattler at one's foot. The two rattlers within a 100 yards and 14 days reminded me of an incident at the packhouse; it must have been in the early 60s when Daddy and Seward McNabb did some hobby farming out there. The packhouse (images elsewhere) had a lean-to shelter that protected a pile of lumber. Daddy saw a rattlesnake there and about that time, Mama's brother Herbert, who was always armed, drove up so Daddy proceeded to tell him the humongous size of the snake. They pushed the lumber around until they saw the snake, which Herbert killed. The snake was not so large as Daddy described and since he had lost his standing as a "real man" by working out of an office for years, he was the butt of some heavy duty ribbing (a couple of other people came up in the meantime). The thing that kept Daddy going over the years was perseverance (ungladly often to the exclusion of anyone else's opinions or feelings), so he kept at it until THE snake was found. The ribbing stopped, THE snake was killed . . . . In twos, again, fall rattlesnake bites on the farm. One was delivered to an eight-year-old African-american youth, who was helping Uncle Joe work a fence line between our farm and his. I don't know whether the boy was standing on our side of the line or Uncle Joe's, a mere technicality anyhow. The child died. I can't remember more, except that it was a long long time ago, perhaps in the 20s. By the time I can along in the 40s, Uncle Joe was not sober long enough to work or care to work. Later, perhaps in the 40s, before my time, a tenant farmer went out to the crib to feed up about dusk and he was bitten by a rattlesnake, but it was not fatal. I don't know whether it was the crib to the east (which I must deconstruct) or the log crib with side shelters for animals to the west (which was torn down about 1955). I've thought about this situation for a year, it seems. Three rattlesnake bites on the farm come to my mind, but I can only pull up these two? |
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| Download Supplemental Image A | Download Reduced Image (Original Image can be supplied upon request.) |
Download Supplemental Image B | ||
