HONEST TO BLOG

Experiment, part 7
now updated with photo and annotation in last paragraphs

I stained a little more of the deck with a friend, but it began to rain. So we cleaned the house instead and had a late lunch. If you can do your chores with a friend, I highly recommend it.

As I've largely cut my own hair for the past 17 years, I'm thinking about going to a real barber to get my hair cut. I'll let you know what comes of this wild idea.

This evening was spent in conversation. Sometimes these evening-long conversations are like debates, sometimes they are like dances, sometimes they are like dadaist literature, and sometimes they are like diplomatic missions. Tonight I have no confidence that anything I said was taken seriously, and am almost sure my pleas will be forgotten. I really have mixed feelings about it, but the feeling of disgust is prominent... or maybe it's resignation.

Tonight I stopped by my parents' to exchange cars with them because I have a wagon and they needed to transport some stuff. Anyway, as I approach the door my mind is deeply occupied by profound sundries... I lift the key to the lock, and out of the bottom corner of my vision a mass of shining black skirts to the left. I gaze down, and in a single moment a rush of adrenalin floods me as I stumble backwards into the rocking chair on the porch. I completely lose my breath; I mean it has utterly gone out of me from shock. Finally my higher brain functions kick back in and I realize I am face to face (or toe to face) with a (four foot?) black rat snake.

For a while neither of us move as I regain my composure and decide that since I almost stepped on him, and he surely saw me coming, if he was going to strike then it would be done already. So I take a few steps and unlock the door and go in. I grab my parents' camera and go out the side of the house and around and snap a few photos. Then I find some info on Pantherophis obsoletus. Wikipedia still has him mis-taxonomied as a sub-species of Elaphe obsoleta.