The Muse is Loose

Today I am a bird-watcher and a bird lover. I love most of them, anyway. As a country boy I had a different attitude. Birds were to be hunted with a bb gun. They were to be thrown at with rocks, or shot at with my sling shot. Those were my weapons of choice. Most of the birds were quite safe. Finding bird eggs in their nests was also exciting . Meadow larks would tunnel their nests into the tall grass. Most birds built the nest in a high and difficult place to reach. One summer morning, not far from our house,I found a nest I had not seen before. It was in a scrub tree of some kind, a little bit over my head. I reached up into the nest to gather an egg or two. I would put them back after I had held them and seen their colors. What I was rubbing my hand over in that nest was not an egg. I was sure of that. It was smooth and cool ,and all over the nest. This called for more investigation. I was able to pull the limb down to eye level to see what I had been rubbing my hand on. It was a small rattlesnake! I had been petting a rattlesnake that had recently eaten the bird eggs found there. Perhaps it's contentment from a full meal spared me, I don't know. I ran to the house and got my Dad who came with a hoe and killed the "ground rattler" . I had a life lesson taught that summer day: Never reach in a nest until you can see what's there! " Look before you leap" goes along with this. There are many inviting "nests" for us to peek into. Sometimes we can simply reach in to check the "eggs". A word of caution: There could be a deadly rattlesnake in the nest, coiled and ready to strike. If innocent eggs are in the nest, let them be. If there is a rattlesnake, it may not be one you can pet without getting bitten.