People You Meet Along the Way...
I know that many of you will want to explain in detail the need to have a variety of snakes in the world...let me save you the finger work...I have for many years upheld the notion that there are only two kinds of snakes...live ones and dead ones. It is my fervent desire to insure there is only one kind of snake...
I was a squad leader in a truck platoon in Mannheim, Germany. The opposite squad leader was Smitty, a deep south black man who felt much the same way as me about snakes. We were on a field exercise in the woods around Viernheim. Smitty and I were sharing a fox hole since there was only about 8 soldiers from our platoon in the woods. The rest were out in their trucks actuallly doing their jobs. But the commitment to do the field problem was firm so we did what the Army always does in those situations...we "simulated" having a couple of squads in place...we actually had two fox holes and a command post...and these were the only positions the enemy ("aggressor force" made up of soldiers from another company) were allowed to attack s.
It was dusk, getting dark in the woods, when Smitty opened up with his M14. Now I have to explain to the unitiated about M14, well any military weapon, and use of blanks. The M14 is a gas operated rifle, which means that a portion of the burning gas from shooting the bullet is diverted into a piston that pushes a rod that cocks the rifle so it can fire again immediately. When we are in training situations, we use blank ammunition to aid in the "realism"...but since there is no bullet in a blank round, there is no back pressure to force gas into the piston...so the rifle doesn't cock. To add back pressure, a device, called a blank adaptor, is placed into the barrel of the rifle that restricts the escaping gas...so the gas operation...operates. Blanks are not safe. There is a lot of muzzle blast from a blank and this blast and debrie from the cartridge can and does cause damage, even death...(Google Jon-Eric Hexum's death if you have any doubts).
Gotta tell you one more thing before I can finish this up. There are supposedly two kinds of snakes in Germany...a very nasty fellow called the European Adder...very akin to our Western Diamondback...which I personaly have never seen and I have spent a lot of days and nights in the woods and fields of Germany. The other is hardly more than an earthworm that moves like a snake and has eyes and a mouth. This kind of snake I have seen many times...I can say it but I ain't sure this is how you spell it : Blindenschlange. It is harmless and the biggest one I ever saw was maybe four inches long. Okay...
The platoon sergeant and I ran to the perimeter, thinking that the enemy was using the time honored Sunset Attack. We both got to the foxhole at the same time to find Smitty shouldering his M14, sans blank adaptor, and blasting away at something in the hole,,,a very shallow hole...we weren't allowed to dig holes in Comrades forest. Sgt Bean, the Platoon sergeant asked Smitty what he was doing. Smitty pointed to three or four pieces of Blindenschlange that were squirming at the bottom of the hole. Smitty was upset because no matter how many times he halved the snake parts, they wouldn't die.
Sgt Bean told him to knock it off...that was a good snake. Smitty looked up with a evil grin and said, "Not yet...but he's fixin to be".