Hello to All:
It has been a quiet week out here. Well, most of the time anyway. Those grasshoppers that I thought had gone away…they didn’t. I have no idea why I would not see one for a couple of days and then here they are back. And they grew a lot in those couple of days. Here is a helpful hint, don’t leave your car/truck windows cracked to allow air circulation, you will have a car/truck full of grasshoppers when you open the door. They don’t want to get out either. Open the doors and get a broom and sweep and push and wack them to clear them out. There will still be one hiding under the seat and jump up on your knee when you are going about 65 mph and scare the socks off of you.
Only so many ways to say, “It sure has been hot out here”. I saw 107º on my electric home weather station. That was about 5pm on Saturday. I saw that my old home town of Pecos registered 109º. It will only get hotter and next week they start the annual rodeo. Pecos Texas, home of the world’s first rodeo. There has been some other places to claim the same title but what they really had was a horse show or something. Real cowboy competition for prize money was in Pecos. This will be the 136th annual rodeo. They draw the top cowboys and have the best stock available in Texas and Oklahoma.
If you care to see a great rodeo it is well worth the drive.
The little black and white cat that I called Mini the Moocher has gone missing for a couple of days. I still leave her a bowl of food over where she likes to hide from me. Also water. She is not afraid to come up on the porch to drink out of my cat’s water bowl. That may be best. Linda Dye said that the place where she killed that snake the other night has the dog’s water bucket. She said that was the third rattler that she has killed this month in about the same spot and thinks that they come for the water. Never thought about it much. I thought snakes got food and water from the rats or what ever they swallow. I have lived most of my life in West Texas and have never seen a rattler go up to water in any type of container to drink. Also, I have camped out on the banks of the Pecos river many times and never saw a rattler go to the water. But then, I have seen rattlers do things that people say “you will never see a rattler do so and so” and I have seen them do it. Like crawl up in a mesquite tree and out on a branch , around the thorns and to lie in the shade and off the hot ground. I saw that up close and personal one time. I was working with a seismograph crew (jug hustler) out in Brewster county. We got a little break in the work and looked for some shade to rest a minute. A couple of guys crawled under the truck. I went over to a mesquite tree and crawled under on my back. Ahhh, shade. Then I looked up and about 4” above my nose was a rattler. I think that it was asleep or at least didn’t give any indication that he knew I was that close. People, I set a world’s record for doing a backstroke and not getting hand or foot more than a ¼ “ off the ground until I was ten foot clear of that mesquite. The other guys came over to see what the heck I was doing and why. Everyone was amazed to see a rattler up on a mesquite limb. Yes, the rattler was of good size. No, we didn’t kill it. We didn’t have a good way to attack a rattler in a mesquite tree without getting us stuck by thorns or bit by the snake. So, we moved on and left that tree to the rattler. We didn’t look to see if there was more than one. So it goes in our quiet little corner of Coleman County.
Talpa Bob
