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Yeah, I hear ya, Jon'. But, if it weren't, how would we have so many great memories to cling to? I don't think "wasted" is quite the right word.

SRH

Stan;
In the area where I grew up I never saw a cottonmouth in my life, we just weren't "Blessed" with them around here. We had Rattlers & Copperheads, but no Cottonmouths. There were always just plain ol water snakes but I didn't pay them much mind.
If my memory is correct I think the first live Cottonmouth I ever saw was at Fort Stewart GA, used to go there for summer camp with the National Guards.

If the area where you were frog hunting is anything at all like the area around Stewart I wouldn't call it being Chicken, just Smart.

I'm thinking having gators, cottonmouths, and related varmints would have changed the carefree nature of my childhood greatly.
Snow, the kind that can last 6 months or so, like we get here, has the twin benefits of being fun for a kid to play in, and holding down the varmint population.
Good luck in the .22 rifle quest, gents. We have been shooting the 241 a bunch of late, as it is near the front of the safe, and the child is interested in his Grandfather's artifact, but, I will drag my .22s out to play, very soon.


Best,
Ted

God looks after young 'uns in the country, Ted. I am firmly convinced that kids like me had a guardian angel assigned to us. I'd pick blackberries, plums and muscadines barefooted, knowing there were rattlers in the blackberry patches, under the plum bushes and the muscadine vines. We'd run when we saw a big one, or step on one, and come right back the next day. I fished around ponds where cottonmouths were thick as flies, barefooted. Once I had my foot propped up on an old stump on the bank while fishing and began to smell something rank. I looked down right under my foot to see a big pile of cottonmouth coiled. I ran home, got Daddy's Nylon 66 Seneca Green and shot several times into the hole. I got a stick and drug out three big cottonmouths, gorged with frogs. We'd swim in the biggest holes on little branches and creeks with no adults around ......... some of the snakiest places around, and never give snakes a thought.

I'd swim out in the middle of the oxbow river lakes, in the Savannah River swamp, as a boy, on hot afternoons when the fish weren't biting. There were gators there big enough to swallow me whole and I never thought twice about it. But, one day while paddling up Herschman Lake, back to the landing, an alligator gar, half as long as the bateau I was in, came up alongside for a few seconds and then just drifted back down into the murky depths. That wound it up for me. No one I've ever heard of has been attacked by a gar, but this one was so big he gave me the heebie-jeebies. He must've weighed over a hundred pounds.

I won't be surprised one day in Glory to hear an angel tell me "I sure was glad when you grew up, you kept me busy as a boy." Hey, He shut the mouths of lions for Daniel, He can sure do the same with snakes, gators and gar. Great memories.

Lord, how I still miss my Grandaddy, after 41 years.

SRH

Good description of Southern childhood Stan. I been there too...Geo

Stan looking back it is a wonder I am here at all. Your post got me thinking about all the things I did growing up which are frown upon now but we're done without any problems. Here are some of my worst ones. Like taking my .22 rifle to school on the bus, no case of course, to shoot it after school in the local 4h or NRA program. Walked the rifle directly to the gym teachers office and left it there in the rack all day. I think we paid 27 cents for 50 .22 lr bullets to shoot behind the gym. Top score that day got an extra 50 bullets. Competition was fierce for those free bullets. Now days they have the swat team on me. Some years we have eight or ten boys on the bus with their .22's.

Driving tractors on the road when too young, age six or seven. Driving farm trucks on the highway when too young to get a regular drivers liscense and back then it was legal. I could drive a six wheel truck loaded down with grain but not my mothers two seater convertible.

Walking barefoot as much as I did it is a wonder I don't have more foot injuries than I got. Glass, metal you name it cut my feet up. But I loved going without shoes. Never gave a single thought to protecting my skin from the sun. By the Fourth of July I could pass for a colored person at a medium distance. By the end of August I had to be a registered Democrat. Now I worry about skin cancer but the damage is done.

Hitch hiking. Years ago you could hitch a ride anywhere. You could pick up a person hitch hiking and never have a safety problem. Heck we walked everywhere. A mile or two was nothing. Bikes or tractors were for real trips.

We used dynamite to blow out stumps and my brother and I must have blown out several hundred stumps by ourselves. Driving tractors with fenders removed. Power take offs with no shields to prevent getting entangled. Unclogging a corn header or the discharge on the combine when they choked up. Still under power too often. Testing to see if the fence is hot. Yes,,,,,,,yes it was too often, ouch. Climbing over 80 feet up a large pine or oak tree just because I could. Mixing fuel oil and a common farm fertilizer to blow a pot hole in the marsh because after 1968 dynamite was much harder to get.

Countless time going out in a small Woden skiff. with no life vest of any type. Staying just a few minutes too long on the Chesapeake Bay, when a storm was coming because the fish were biting too well or the ducks were thick as fleas. Going out in a boat that was about half rotten in the first place.

But you learn. You learn there is no safe end on a snake because when angry they are faster than I was. I hate wire cables for pulling but never fear to use a chain to do the same task if possible. Having seen more than one cable snap and come back whip fashion will teach you quick. You learn to pay attention to your job at hand. Finger don't grow back after all.

I would not think about letting my kids or grandkids do a tenth the things I did growing up. And that's sad because I had more fun than you could ever immagine but I don't think kids today could do half the stuff I did and get away with it.

Rifles at school . . . how about guns on planes? The PanAm gate agent didn't want to let me get on a flight to Casablanca in 1971, carrying what was obviously a long gun in a soft case. (It was a shotgun.) Even though I had a diplomatic passport. Had checked with PanAm in advance, and they said the crew would take it and hold it in the cockpit. Thought I was stymied until the crew came along. Stopped the captain, asked him if they'd hold it for me in the cockpit. No problem.

There were a couple wrinkles in Morocco. They'd just had an attempted coup about 2 months previously. Lots of guys strolling around with submachineguns. Got escorted to the chief customs officer's office. It was a pump, which he'd never seen before. Pretty soon, I had about half the cops in the airport watching me demonstrate how it worked. Then I had to show my American firearms registration certificate. Thought fast on that one. Showed the customs guy the US customs declaration form. He didn't speak English. All he was looking for was an official form with a number on it.

Stan, your being downstream of the bomb plant, I'm surprised you didn't see two-headed gators and snakes.
Miller, I've hunted and fished Stewart since the 70's and it is ideal reptile habitat--sandhills with gopher tortoise burrows are made to order for snake dens and the swamps abound with gators and snakes. However, I rarely see snakes. I suppose it is because they don't want to be around me just as much as I don't want to be around them. I can count on one hand the number of venomous snakes I've seen at Stewart. Two basking cottonmouths during turkey season, last one two seasons ago, and a freshly shed timber rattler (canebrake) last month while mushrooming. My relationship with them was reciprocal. They left me alone and I them. I see gators most every time I cross the Canoochee bridges. As for snakes, I know they are there and govern my self accordingly and don't go in the woods without snake boots unless the weather is cold. Gil

My set-to with rattlers never ends until cold weather comes each fall. Last week my wife walked our little 5 lb. Yorkie out to the mailbox on a 12 ft. leash. When she came back across the patio, and started up the back steps, she was looking at the mail and not where she was walking. The dog was ahead of her and ran on up the steps. She looked behind her when she reached the steps for some reason, and they had just stepped within inches of a timber rattler about 3 1/2 feet long. Who was retreating under our patio table. She called me and it just so happened I was within 1/4 mile of the house in the pickup. I hurried there and killed him with a boat paddle .............. couldn't shoot on the patio, and there was shrubbery on both sides for him to hide in.

As I told her, we share this part of the world with critters that can and will cause you misery and/or death. You just can't walk around with your head in the clouds, but have to be diligent during the spring and summer months.

Gil, I've heard some reports of mutated mammals and reptiles across the river from us, near SRS, but never actually saw any with my own eyes.

SRH