Slicker to Hick Blog

Do not pet.

I heard about copperhead snakes for the first time when I was about ten years old. The babysitter I loved, Mrs. Prickett, would sometimes entertain me with stories from her past. One day, she shared the saga of her run-in with a copperhead. She had gone down to her basement to retrieve a box, and when she moved it–surprise! There was the snake. It was surprised too, and opened its jaws and spat five little baby snakes at Mrs. Prickett, one at a time, one right after the other. Mrs. P rocketed upstairs and promptly threw a hysterical fit.

I dare you to forget this story. I certainly didn’t! When I told this cautionary tale to my husband, Butch, he said he’d always heard that snakes hatch from eggs. I pointed out that Mrs. Prickett had never lied to me. Google was called in, and we found out that a copperhead gives birth to live young, but babies grow in eggs that remain inside the mother’s body. So win-win-win; everyone was right.

We also learned that a female copperhead can store sperm in a kind of uterine safety deposit box. She summons those sperm to active duty when she decides the time is right; sometimes years down the road. She can also give virgin birth, producing what are basically little snake clones. Ms. Copperhead is a strong, independent snake who doesn’t need a male. She can choose to become a mom whenever she has reached a point in her career when pregnancy wouldn’t be too inconvenient.

All this new knowledge was not much more than wow-worthy until we bought our little untamed patch of Wise County, Texas. We moved in June. Summertime, and the living was snake-y. It seemed like Facebook was filled with stories about close encounters of the viper kind–in a flowerpot, a fireplace, a woodpile. . . . One of Butch’s high school friends posted that one had slithered under her refrigerator and would not come out. She asked for the wisdom of the group, and the general consensus was that her house would have to be burned to the ground.

The first crew to work on the building we were finishing (the property included a half-built house) discovered an 18-inch rat snake living in the kitchen sink cabinet. They didn’t kill it because a rat snake is harmless to humans, if you discount the moment of heart stoppage when you first see it. They said they’d guide it outside if they saw it again, which is not as reassuring as it first may sound. I comforted myself by remembering that rat snakes keep the rodent population down. After all, I hate mice and rats, and I was the unreasonable parent who wouldn’t let the classroom rat come home with my son over the weekend. (You may have read about that incident in Mean Mom Monthly.)

Several weeks passed. One Saturday I was out chopping briar vines by the road, and Butch was about 100 yards away, out of sight behind the house. I had just moved to a new tree and was pruning a few low branches when I looked down and saw a scaly cylinder patterned in shades of brown. I stepped (quickly!) back to the asphalt and shouted for Butch. No reply. I texted him–nothing. In desperation, I placed an actual voice call, but still no response. Was it a copperhead? I didn’t know, and didn’t want to leave the area and give it a chance to escape if it was. I took a picture, using the telephoto feature.

I sent the photo to two friends and asked, “Is this a copperhead?” Within a minute, one texted back in all caps, “VENOMOUS. DO NOT PET.”

I summoned all my lungpower from a lifetime of not smoking and yelled. This time, Butch heard me. About fifteen minutes and three gunshots later, the snake was no more. We hung the carcass on the barbed wire fence as a warning to others, not knowing that a snake hanging on a fence is supposed to bring rain.

And that, my friends, is how Wise County came to have one of the wettest Octobers on record.

Slicker to Hick Blog

When plants attack.

In my pre-rural days, the only literal thorns in my life were on rose stems. Those were easily avoided and forgotten in the excitement of “Flowers! He’s really interested after all!” But now. . .we live in a real-life Game of Thorns and I’m hoping we are wily enough to outsmart the little prickers.

The property we bought had been neglected for years, and one of the first things you noticed from the cocoon of your car was that each of the many trees was surrounded by a puffy skirt of vines and brush. I knew there would have to be significant clearing done around each tree, but I didn’t realize how much I would come to hate the vines.

First look: what’s to hate? Leaves in a thin, heart-ish shape, attractively mottled in green with the occasional sassy red accent. And the name itself–Smilax. Smiling, happy Smilax.

Closer look: see all those thorns? Placed all around the stem at about half-inch intervals or closer? Making it impossible to touch the vine, even casually, without a scratch or puncture wound? It became clear to me that the only one smiling would be the smilax vine itself, smiling in a smug little sneer as it drew yet another bead of blood. Or smirking, as it managed to snag a favorite shirt.

Thorny Smilax vine. I’ve also heard it called briar vine. If its scientific name isn’t Smilax satanicus, it should be. The property is overrun with these specimens. Even the smallest, youngest vines are densely studded with tiny spikes of peril, and each of the hundred or so trees has at least twenty malevolent shoots springing from the ground around it.

So how to eradicate these clinging ropes that will choke the tree to death if left unchecked? The vines’ leaves and stems are very waxy and impervious to herbicide–except in amounts huge enough to kill all nearby trees. Fortunately, they are easily clipped with lopping shears, but then they must be gathered and hauled off. Is that easy? Of course not!

You must grip the Smilax tightly enough to yank it from the thousand arboreal nooks and crannies where it has insinuated itself, but not so tightly that thorns pierce your glove. Many of our vines have had years to snake their way high into their host tree and are at least ten feet long. The vines seem to take particular delight in snapping back to scrape your face as you coil them for their trip to the burn pile. Another favorite trick is to surreptitiously clip you on the back of the ankle, sending a shot of adrenaline to your nerves as your panicked brain screams, “SNAKE! SNAKE! SNAKE!”

And now, we come to the root of this problem plant. Think of a subway. The roots of the Smilax form a subterranean network that channels nourishment to the stems that emerge at regular intervals and tunnel their way up to the sun. At less frequent intervals along the path, there is a swelling in the root like a big underground hub. It may be the brain of the whole enterprise. In any case, it is a horrid, bulbous blob with long, tapering spikes sticking out of it. It looks like Satan’s sweet potato.

But enough negativity! As it happens, the Smilax needs lots of sun to survive, and lopping it to the ground each time the vine emerges makes it weaker and weaker until it finally gives up the ghost. And all those vines harvested so far fueled a smoking hot bonfire in late December.

Slicker to Hick Blog

MVV Awards

One thousand bucks bought it from a fabulous, feisty woman up the road. She gave me her business card, which read “Ranch Goddess.” She was selling because her husband had died and she just couldn’t keep up with all the chores 50-plus acres demand; not by herself. And the latest boyfriend hadn’t worked out, so she had decided at last to hire out all the land maintenance. She wouldn’t be needing the tractor anymore. Besides, she was going on a cruise in three weeks and needed gambling green.

The ’76 Satoh Beaver tractor came home with us, along with a high-sided plastic trailer that hitches onto the back. This gem of a machine would turn heads if it ever went into town–partly because the Ranch Goddess painted it a light, bright blue. The Satoh is small, as tractors go, but powerful enough to have pulled a carelessly parked sedan from the mud. It also extracted multiple wooden posts set in concrete blobs from the ground where they were buried. Its main job recently has been to drag its trailer partner to the burn pile to dump countless loads of thorny briar vine. The Satoh is always referred to as “LBT.” (That’s Little Blue Tractor, for the acronym-impaired.)

Sharing Most Valuable Vehicle honors is a 1996 Mazda B4000 pickup truck that we call The Mule. It has hauled, hauled, and hauled–mainly furniture and all kinds of construction trash. It has the endearing quality of possessing an air conditioner that blows a refreshingly arctic blast. The fact that it’s street legal is another big plus. The Mule spent much of its early life in the city of the Red Sox and has the rust to prove it.

It allowed itself to be fixed with a $3 bolt from Lowe’s when the stick shift came off in my husband’s hand. This little pickup is the toughest of cookies and you never have to worry about scratching the paint or cracking the windshield–these things have already been accomplished.

Join me in raising a cup of diesel to toast LBT and Mule, MVV’s of the year here at Wise Acres!