Hunting season is just around the corner. The other day I saw a television commercial for a hunting clinic.
I don’t understand why people (usually testosterone-poisoned men) need a clinic to teach them to hunt better. Isn’t man the most advanced creature on this planet (Al Gore excluded)? Don’t tell me that a member of the human species can be outwitted by a turkey or a deer.
“He was crafty,” hunters always say of the fabled One That Got Away. “He ran into a small patch of trees, but he doubled back in there and came out the same way he went in.”
This is crafty? Any idiot who’s watched a few Westerns knows that old trick.
“He’s gone into that stand of trees, Paw,” Little Joe would say to Ben Cartwright, speaking about a ruthless criminal who had robbed the bank, stolen some horses and been mean to a pretty woman. “He’s probably got a horse stashed on the other side.”
“No, son,” Ben Cartwright would answer. “I know his kind. He’s going to double back and try to throw us off his track.”
Ben Cartwright had this tactic figured out waaaay back in the 1870s (or 1960s, whenever *Little House on the Prairie * was filmed). He’d be a better hunter today than most of the guys tromping through the woods, and he’s DEAD now. If he were still alive, he could make a fortune traveling around the country giving hunting seminars. He could probably still do it anyway, if he figured out how to get himself from one seminar to the other.
I, myself, have never hunted anything more wily than a Klondike bar in the freezer, but I don’t see why it should be so difficult. You pick out a gun roughly the size of a Winnebago, you go sit in the woods waaaay before the sun comes up, and if something comes along, you shoot it. If it runs, you shoot it again. Then you take it home and have it mounted.
That experience is reenacted year in and year out in forests and woods across America. I’m sure it’s a thrilling way to freeze your butt off in the dark, but it can’t even come close to an experience I had when I was a teenager.
My mother, who is a saint, really (hi Mom!), dragged me out of bed one summer morning and told me that a snake had gotten into our basement. She wanted me to kill it.
I said no.
Mom reminded me that she did most of the cooking in the family, and if I wanted to eat, I’d kill that snake in the basement.
Faced with the choice of starving to death, living off the scrambled-egg sandwiches my dad would make incessantly, or killing a snake, I opted for a confrontation with the Serpent King.
I got out of bed and put on my robe, then went outside. The only access to our basement was an outside door, which was always shut. I had no idea how a snake would have gotten into the basement unless he’d somehow learned to use his tail to twist the doorknob. If that was the case, he’d probably also learned how to use his tail to shoot a gun the size of a Winnebago, and he was laying in wait for me in the basement, while Ben Cartwright whispered in his little snakey ear to squeeze the trigger, not jerk it.
My parents’ basement has a short hallway that makes a sharp turn just inside the doorway; consequently, you couldn’t see into the room until you stepped around the corner. I was afraid the snake, thanks to Ben Cartwright’s savvy advice, was lying just around the corner, waiting for someone to sink his fangs into.
I asked Mom for something I could use to flush out the snake and beat it to death. Mom disappeared for a minute, then came back with a dust mop.
If ever there was a device NOT designed for hunting, it is the dust mop. I didn’t see how I was going to subdue and/or kill the Serpent King with a dust mop, but as they say, mine was not to reason why.
I stepped warily around the corner, scanning the floor. My chief fear was the crafty reptile, having heard me come in and using Ben Cartwright’s hunting tips, was even now doubling back to strike at my unguarded posterior.
I suppose I must have looked pretty stupid: A teenage boy in a maroon robe, turning circles in the basement while holding a dust mop.
Just as I was becoming too embarrassed to continue, I spotted the snake. It was huddled up in one corner of the room, trying to trick me by playing dead. Oh, he had obviously learned well from Ben. I wasn’t fooled, though.
I leaped into the air, uttered a banzai yell, and brought the dust mop down in a crushing blow. Had I used any other instrument, the snake would have died of fright even if the mighty blow didn’t kill it.
Naturally, the dust mop did nothing but irritate the snake. Its body got tangled up in the fluffy strands of the mop, and when I raised the mop off the floor to deal another Strike of Justice to the snake, it jerked the snake into the air. He flew across the room and landed in a heap.
I don’t know if you’ve ever personally witnessed a snake fly through the air when you’ve been beating it with a dust mop, but let me tell you, it’s a toe-curling sight. I called out a warning to Mom (“It’s a flying snake, Mom, and they’re very dangerous; best if you close the door so you won’t get hurt while I engage this satanic beast in mortal combat”; Mom, on the other hand, swears that all she heard was a plaintive, terrified wail) and advanced once again. I figured my life expectancy was measured in seconds at this point; the snake would leap upon me and bite my lips off.
I was about to swing the Dust Mop of Doom once again when I noticed something about the Flying Serpent King – namely, that it was rubber. It was a fake snake that had somehow fallen out of a sack of old toys I had thrown away a few days ago.
So although my snake hunt didn’t yield any real prey, it was quite exciting. I don’t think I’ve ever had a finer moment than when I stepped into the basement – armed only with my courage, a sense of duty, and a dust mop – believing there was a vicious, poisonous reptile lurking somewhere in the darkness.
Despite my pleas, Mom refused to pay to have the snake mounted as a trophy.
Even without a trophy, though … I think Ben Cartwright woulda been proud of me.