Where's the "off" button?

          Good evening, 919 Gang. I suppose we all have some pet peeves. One of my biggies is the “television” set in the gas pump. Often it will say something like, “Here’s your local news.” First off, I know news, and that’s not it. Second, I know Ramona, and you’re not local. I resent being trapped into listening to this stuff while I pump gas. So, why don’t I go to a different station? This one sells regular at $3.39 a gallon. Much cheaper than anyone else in town. I guess you’re right – I’m selling out to this stupid machine.

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          REBER: Last night Welton Jones share a warning the older folks gave kids in Texas.

MIRIAM RAFTERY writes:

I used to hear that same poem about coral snakes from my Texas relatives. Glad we don’t have them here.

          Did you know we have a beautiful pinkish-red snake called red racer? It’s also called a coachwhip. Here is a photo one of our readers in Lakeside’s El Monte Valley sent in:

They are very fast-moving snakes, aggressive and climb trees. Fortunately they are not poisonous – and they eat rattlesnakes. Though I’m not sure I’d want to have one drop down on me from a treetop, as has been known to happen.

          There are many interesting myths about them. One is that they will chase people and beat them to death with the tail. Another is that they will suck the milk from cows. My favorite is that they could be the origin of the Hoop Snake legend, supposedly a snake that can grab its tail with its mouth to form a circular shape and roll along to chase its prey.

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DAVID FARMER writes:    

          American history would have looked and sounded very different if the Battle of the Pronouns had been raging when our country was founded. For example: "On the eighteenth of April in Seventy-five hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year [of the midnight ride of Paul Revere]."

          See? Longfellow didn't care if a woman remembered Paul's ride. She was only expected to appreciate his silverware.

          Another example from the same period: Minutemen were called on to abandon their plows at a moment's notice to shoot

Redcoats. Minutewomen could stay in their kitchens, baking shoo-fly pies. The Minuteman missile dates to the 1950s. (Women were too smart to lend their gender to something that was designed to shoot out of the ground, hit a target, and explode.)

          More recently, as you've no doubt heard, Berkeley, Calif., is rewriting its official documents to eliminate gender-specific nouns and pronouns. The ultra-liberal city will presumably no longer be referring to manpower, manholes, man-made, "men working in trees," etc. That last phrase, along with "flagman ahead" and "fireman" have already gone the way of dodos and most bison in even non-liberal locales.

          I haven't checked the Berkeley municipal website, but I assume the new words will be, like, personpower, personholes, person-made, etc. I doubt that they will say humanholes, because there's a man in that word.

          Personally, I'm still bothered by some of the verbal contortions spawned by this movement. You'll read something like, "The driver turned on their lights." That's just plain ugly. There must be a better way.

          One word that's been around for many years could work in this context. "(S)he" covers both genders. Oops. There are no longer just two genders. People can now be non-binary if they feel like it. And I thought that was a math term.

          Ira Gershwin forecast this situation in 1931 when he wrote about "all the sexes from Maine to Texas." Now, different states allow people to define their own genders or orientation: LGBTQ. But there are probably some states in the Deep South that are still resisting.

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          REBER: We welcome August with hearty Happy Birthday wishes for Bobbi Ignelzi and Don Kohlbauer on Aug. 1.

Jack J. Reber

P.O. Box 2239

Ramona, CA 92065-0938

United States

Eating like a bird

          Good evening, 919 Gang. See how the chain goes? Cathy Lubenski posts a photo, then John Gibbins shares one. Who is next?

JOHN GIBBINS writes:

Kathy Lubenski’s egret story/photo reminded me of this great blue heron at Fiesta Island dining on a gopher a while ago.

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   WELTON JONES writes:

          OK, some snakes are good guys. But here from my childhood is info drilled into youngsters in Texas, which has all this country’s poisonous snakes: the rattlers, the copperheads, the water moccasins and the coral snakes.

          You might, we were taught, survive a bite by one of the first three but the reclusive little coral snakes had a different type poison, almost always fatal. They were easy enough to spot, with  their bright rings of red, black and yellow, but they closely resembled a non-poisonous cousin called the king snake. The crucial difference was the order of the rings. Coral snakes have red, yellow, black, yellow, red, yellow, black, yellow, etc. The king snake has red, black, yellow, black, red, black, etc. Thus the vital rhyme:

“Red and yellow kill a fellow, red and black venom  lack.”

          Not sure if that’s totally true in California (Wikipedia is vague) but it was taught as solemn gospel in Texas back then, backed by horrible tales of children who miscounted.

          REBER: Adults love to torment kids. In northwest Missouri we were taught that there was a danger from copperheads or water moccasins, but the snake you really had to watch for was the blue racer.

          Very seriously, and repeatedly, we were told that the blue racer was deadly and that it would pursue you. Plus it could outrun you and it would chase you down.

          It was many years before I thought to check any of this information. What I learned is that the blue racer is nonvenomous and it works hard to avoid people. Plus, how could a critter with no legs outrun a human?

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          REBER: This is a grand time to salute a grand lady. Happy Birthday, July 31, Noel Osment.

Jack J. Reber

P.O. Box 2239

Ramona, CA 92065-0938

United States

Roadside lunch

          Good evening, 919 Gang. Cathy Lubenski has a great photo. I’m betting it was taken on her phone. The best thing I can say about phones as substitutes for cameras is that you always have one with you.

CATHY LUBENSKI writes:

Hey, Jack, I was driving up Camino De Las Ondas yesterday a.m. when I saw an egret strolling casually up the sidewalk. It was so funny I stopped to take a pic when it suddenly stabbed its beak into the scrub & came up with a rat. While I watched, it threw its beak into the air and swallowed the rat whole and alive! Not something I expected to see on the way to dog walkies or anything I expect to ever to see again.

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MIRIAM RAFTERY writes:

A few years ago, our neighbor killed a gigantic gopher snake that measured well over six feet long with a large diameter that made clear he’d been feasting on neighborhood rodents. The neighbor couldn’t see the tail and thought it was a rattlesnake. Soon after our backyard began to look like the golf course in “Caddyshack.” Gophers decimated our lawn, garden and orchard – even sucking an entire artichoke plant down the gopher hole as I walked out to pick the first artichoke of the season!

          After that it was war on the little critters. We tried a few nontoxic solutions but nothing worked (sound devices, pouring dog poop down the holes, gopher purge plants). In desperation we finally tried poison, a very bad thing due to impacts on hawks and owls.) We put a temporary fence around the hole with the poison That didn’t stop my golden retriever from uprooting the fencing and digging down over a foot to gobble down poison pellets. After a very costly vet bill for stomach pumping, the dog survived unscathed and we had to hire a gopher trapper. It took him several trips, with help from a neighborhood coyote that moved into our orchard and began digging up gophers as entrees or maybe appetizers, before we were finally rid of the dreaded gophers.

          We had more gophers a couple of years later and back came the trapper. After the winter rains the gophers were back, then suddenly seemed to vanish. Now I think I know why. Yesterday I was delighted to discover this relatively young gopher snake slithering through the undergrowth at the top of my driveway! I just hope no overzealous neighbor kills him. The markings are someone similar to a rattler, but you can tell the difference by the heads; note the slim shape of the head in this gopher snake, compared to a thicker, triangular shaped head of a rattlesnake. Also gopher snakes, of course, have no rattles on the tips of their tails. They will eat rats, mice and other rodents as well as gophers. I’m hoping he will “gofer” those pesky gophers though they also dine on rats, squirrels, mice or other rodents and occasionally small birds. They tend to keep rattlers away, as both live in other animals’ burrows, or under rocks. Behold, the beloved gopher snake! (See head and tail shots below) 

 I also hope our resident Cooper’s hawks nesting in our ficus trees don’t have an appetite for snakes. They sometimes eat gophers, too, but lately have been hunting mainly the rabbits that have been abundant this season.

          I urge everyone not to use poisons for rodent control. A wildlife rehab expert recently told me that 85% of the birds of prey they take in have poison in their bloodstreams – and those are the ones that survive, too damaged to return to the wild. Poison can also kill mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, and other wildlife as well as pet dogs and cats that consume a poisoned rodent. Mountain lions are endangered largely due to poisons. Yes, we have had a puma within two houses of our home in the past, too – most likely chowing down on rabbits while slurping water at a seasonal stream here on Mt. Helix.

          Alternatives include putting up an owl box to attracting nesting barn owls (away from lights or noise), getting a zap-trap that kills rodents instantly by shocking them (the trap is reusable, too – ideal if you get, say, a rat in the garage), and encouraging wildlife by providing some cover as habitat. Don’t kill gopher snakes or assume every coyote is evil. We love them on our property for their rodent control predilections.

          If you do have a problem with rattlesnakes, be aware that king snakes (the yellow and black striped reptiles locally, or sometimes yellow, red and black) have an immunity to venom and will actually eat rattlesnakes! They might also eat gopher snakes, but do eat small mammals such as rodents, too, so if you see one I’d advise leaving it alone since you get rodent control and rattler aversion all in one pretty package. No need to worry about coral snakes that are similarly marked and poisonous, since we don’t have any in San Diego County. Peacocks, by the way, will alert if there is a snake in your yard by surrounding it, making lots of noise, and sometimes pecking and stomping a snake to death. Some people in our rural areas keep them as pets for that purpose. I’m told that turkeys will do the same, if kept around long enough not to become a Thanksgiving feast.

          REBER: I have had almost a 100 percent success rate with Macabee gopher traps. They are inexpensive and reusable over and over again. Here’s a site that tells you how to do it.

http://www.garden-counselor-lawn-care.com/macabee-gopher-trap.html

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REBER: Two fine gentleman line up for birthday cake tonight. Happy Birthday, July 30, to Kelly Murphy

and Joe Holly

Jack J. Reber

P.O. Box 2239

Ramona, CA 92065-0938

United States