CRITTER CRAWLING TIME

 by Julie Carter

It's the season. Reports of big snakes, miller moths and coyotes are filtering through the social networks, coffee shops, email lists and spit-and-whittle club members.
A recent headline on the Yahoo web page indicated that snake populations worldwide seem to be declining.
I personally view that as a cause for celebration; however, a British biologist is calling for a worldwide study to determine what is causing this and how to correct it.
I wonder if that Brit ever had to work in country where one eye was devoted to what you were doing and the other was on guard duty watching for a hostile snake.
I'm certain he never carried a gun so he could first shoot a snake before he could turn on the well water for the cattle.
The article seemed to have missed the numbers of snakes gone missing in Taiwan and China where they drink snake blood as an aphrodisiac.
Topping the recent snake stories locally was the 7-foot diamond back bagged on a ranch southeast of Corona, although the 5-footer taken by a little lady near the Capitan Mountains was no less of a threat, the snake or the lady.
Both rattlers were threatening the safety of pets, livestock and children.
Time to pay attention!
Multitasking shooter
I read in an old book about a pioneer woman stirring pancake batter, holding the baby and shooting Indians out the window.
Someone asked her about it, and her response was matter-of-fact.
"Everybody was hungry, the baby would cry if I put him down and the Indians needed shooting."
PawPaw's daycare
When old cowboys go to the house, so to speak, they sometimes take up caring for the grandbabies. In this particular case, the cowboy calls his part in this project PawPaw's Daycare.
All was well in the neighborhood until folks around there had their chickens disappearing in broad daylight.
A shout from Grandmaw was about to change that.
"Get your gun!" she yelled from the yard.
As PawPaw stepped out the door to see what the commotion was about, he saw a fat, well-fed coyote high tailing it across the pasture.
He raised the 30/30 and took aim, squeezed the trigger and missed, but shot close enough to spin the coyote's trajectory another direction.
He levered in another live one. The coyote came out of the sage, still running full tilt at 200 yards out and this time, ran right into a speeding bullet.
Admitting to the possibility of "luck" in the shot, the cowboy explained that the coyote was a Progressive, one who had been eating his chickens without working for them.
"The capitalist in me just couldn't stand it," he said with a grin.
The neighbors, mostly retirees, were impressed over the excitement in the 'hood' and from porches and rocking chairs everywhere you could hear conversations such as: "Bertie, you want to drive over to the Dusty Canyon outfit, hang around and watch that guy cap another chicken-stealin' coyote?"
Sometimes entertainment of any kind comes at a premium.
A documenting photograph showed PawPaw standing under his 10-gallon hat, baby girl in one arm, holding the bagged coyote by the his hind feet in the other. Baby girl might get a nice coyote cape, something Red Riding Hood-style.
"Once you make a nice shot, you just go home and live on the legend," he said. "All is safe again at PawPaw's Daycare."
Women are born with a multi-tasking gene not common to men. There was no pancake batter involved in PawPaw's process of carrying it out a needed shootin'.
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net .