Rattlesnake Bites Do's and Don'ts

Rattlesnakes are emerging from hibernation and moving again. While most of the snakes living around the trails we walk in northern California are harmless, occasionally we’ll see a rattlesnake, or hear from our neighbors they’ve come across one in their garages or back yards.

When Steve and I were in Texas in January, I happened on a coiled rattler next to a turtle pond, and realized it was there only after it warned me with a vigorous shake of its tail. If it had struck, I wouldn’t have known what to do, so today I looked up the do’s and don’ts and here is what I learned, courtesy of the California Poison Control System:

Stay calm. Gently cleanse the area, then get to an emergency room.

Don’t cut the wound with a knife or razor, and don’t suck out the venom (despite what you’ve seen on Gunsmoke).

Don’t apply a tourniquet.

Don’t pack the bite area in ice.

Don’t let the victim drink alcohol.

Booze apparently plays a significant role in snakebite incidents. Experts say young drunk men are often the recipients of snakebites, usually after they’ve grabbed a snake to try to impress a friend. Hic. Ow!

Population: 485

I’ve been incommunicado of late, huddled at my computer, struggling with the opening of my new book – a contemporary story set in Elko, Nevada. I’ve only come up for air twice this week, once to visit Grandma Allie in the hospital, and once to thumb through this month’s The Writer, which features a story by Kurt Chandler on essayist Michael Perry. Chandler makes Perry’s book, Population: 485 – Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time, sound like so much fun, I instantly ordered it from the library. (If I like it I’ll buy it, then read it again – Standard Operating Procedure.)

Chandler offers a para:

In the surrounding countryside, farmsteads with little red barns have been pretty much kicked in the head, replaced with monster dairies, turkey sheds, and vinyl-sided prefabs. … There is a sense of decline. Or worse, of dormancy in the wake of decline. But we are not dead here. We still have Friday-night football games. Polka dances. Bowling. If you know who to ask, you can still get yourself some moonshine, although methamphetamine has become the favored homebrew.

Check out Michael Perry’s website – his new book is Truck: A Love Story, which Chandler calls “…clever, poignant and often hilarious…”

Flannery O'Connor Makes Dirt Sound Good

Flannery O'Connor's "A View of the Woods" is a short story so delicious, it rivals William's Gay's "The Paperhanger." Here is how she handles the description of a grandfather and his granddaughter sitting on the bumper of his car while watching a machine lift out dirt and throw it in a pile:

"Any fool that would let a cow pasture interfere with progress is not on my books," he had said to Mary Fortune several times from his seat on the bumper, but the child did not have eyes for anything but the machine. She sat on the hood, looking down into the red pit, watching the big disembodied gullet gorge itself on the clay, then, with the sound of a deep sustained nausea and a slow mechanical revulsion, turn and spit it up. Her pale eyes behind her spectacles followed the repeated motion of it again and again and her face -- a small replica of the old man's -- never lost its look of complete absorption."

You can find Ms. O'Connor's story in her collection EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE. Run and fetch it, quick!

Happy Belated St. Paddy's Day

Our son-in-law, Erich Kepner, thought it would be fun to wear this golf outfit to work on St. Paddy’s Day. He hit a hole-in-one with his co-workers, who dubbed him Erich O’Kepner!

Mock-ing Bird Yeah-ah

Everybody have you heard
He’s gonna buy me a mockingbird
And if that mockingbird don’t sing
He’s gonna buy me a diamond ring.

Please bird, please don’t sing…

Performed by Carly Simon
Rearranged by Renee

The Plot Thickens by Noah Lukeman

Literary agent Noah Lukeman’s THE PLOT THICKENS: 8 WAYS TO BRING FICTION TO LIFE is a great writing tool. The chapters focus on characterization (outer, inner and applied); the journey; suspense; conflict; context; and transcendency. In this last chapter, Lukeman urges writers to write from a place of not only truth – which we hear fairly often – but also of love. Here is what he says:

No matter what your goal or motivation, you should strive to write from a place of truth and love. This sounds simple but is harder than it seems, as it will entail putting yourself on the line. Truth means being true to yourself and true to your characters and situations; if you hold anything back, the reader will know it; it will mean the difference between authentic and inauthentic…love means not only love for the reader but love for your own work, your own characters; it means having 100 percent passion for them.

Passion is magnetic, Lukeman says. “Writing from a place of truth and love, you can never go wrong.”

He also says the masses are fickle, and so are the critics. “You mustn’t pay attention to any of it, but simply stay focused on crafting the best work you can, and constantly bettering yourself.”

Just do it, basically. But do it better than the next guy.

'Tis the Season to be Sneezin

The cattail fluff is flying. Every tree, shrub, and fencepost along the trail adjacent to the marsh is covered with the stuff – so much so, that some of the leafless branches resemble cocoons. As I was walking yesterday, there was a slight breeze blowing, stirring the fluff and carrying it through the air. Twice I had to shut my eyes as it floated in my direction, and if my mouth had been even slightly parted, I might have swallowed some. The cattail heads are almost comical, resembling bloated hotdogs on sticks, their sides split, their contents spilling out. From a distance the marsh appears in hibernation, but on closer inspection, new growth is cropping up – hardstem bulrush and cattail stems, fuzzy buds on all the willows. The first poppy appeared yesterday, too, and the mallards have paired up. Spring is on its way.

My Little Top Gun

Maya, worn out after a day of tagging elk in San Luis Obispo, heads for the helicopter...

My Little Top Gun, Part 2

...and then she's off!

South Texas Quail Hunt

Steve and I just returned from four days in South Texas, where he hunted quail and I took notes. I had no idea quail hunting was so complicated. We took two trucks of five hunters each, and at one point during the shoot, one of the hunters turned to me and said, “This thing runs like a finely tuned Swiss watch,” which astonished me, given I was thinking along the lines of “organized chaos.” But the more I watched, the more I came to understand there is a method to the madness – that it takes skill, patience, and solid experience to avoid shooting your companion, your dogs, your dogs’ handlers, or the person in the truck taking notes.

We had a great time, and in addition to hunting, Steve took some nice photographs of the region’s birds while I walked the ranch, encountering a rattlesnake. I heard it before I saw it, its rattle warning me I’d gotten too close. I backpedaled at once, taking the long way back instead of the shortcut I’d planned on.

Later that afternoon, Steve took this pic of a wild tom turkey on the ranch.