Snakes


On Sunday I went and played slacker golf at the Hancock golf course: no dress code, lax attention to score, generous use of mulligans and no-penalty hazard drops. As I prepared to tee off on the third hole, I commented to the guy I was with that this was the "Snake Hole." Last time I played this hole, my ball went into a pool in the creek. I found the ball being "guarded" by a snake sticking its head out from under a rock in the creek. He slithered off when I dipped a club in the water to ease the ball away. Anyhow, this time my ball went barely across the creek but landed in some mud and grass in the gully. As I approached, I discovered the ball was resting on the head of a decomposing rattlesnake.

As I have no photos of these encounters, I provide the above, taken this spring. This rat snake was hanging out in the evening as we returned to the house from a day in San Antonio. He was only about four feet long, tops.

A few years ago I found a five-plus foot rat snake entangled in garden netting we had set up for peas. He was tired and unhappy - and probably in pain. So I carefully clipped the netting around him with some long-handled pruning shears. Rat snakes aren't venomous, but he still put on a brief show of lunging at the shears before tiring. Finally I got him free from the body of netting, although he had a little netting tangled on him that I couldn't remove without handling him up close. I didn't want to press my luck, so I let him gather his strength and slither off. Hopefully he went on to live a longer rat-eating life. Lesson: we have since then used chickenwire for peas.

(T)ransportation Montage


As I aim to please my few readers, I am fulfilling a request for some Boston T pictures from my trip. Ideally these should be viewed while listening to the "Montage" song from the South Park episode "Asspen" (the skiing timeshare one).
These were all taken with a "portable" aging secondhand Canon PowerShot. And most were taken with a slow shutter underground (because flash photos in subway stations stink). When I was in college and had access to a darkroom and free supplies, I had made a set of nice (unlike these random shots) B&W photos of parts of the T. They were lost along with a box-worth of stuff when we moved to Texas seven years ago. *sigh*
Above photo taken from the northbound platform at the Kendall Square (Red line) station. Note a glimpse of one of the sets of chimes on the right side of the photo.

Above, a Green line (C line) train pulling into the hub of the universe (Park Street station).

Above, the Green line at Coolidge Corner. Shortly after the Kenmore Square split, the C line runs above ground, separated from traffic, in the median of Beacon Street. Note the busses lined up on the far side. There was a water main break on Beacon that shut down a stretch of the line. So you had to take shuttle busses from St. Mary's to Coolidge Corner, at which point trolley service resumed.

Above, a view from within a Green line car. This is the C line again; IIRC, this was taken heading inbound at about St. Paul St. The final photo below, taken with flash enabled, is a good example of why using the flash was a bad idea. Photo is of the Red line arriving at the southbound platform of the Harvard Square station. For the record, it was an Ashmont train.

Bethany Squared


Little Bethany had a great time on this trip. The above photo is in Naugatuck State Forest, technically just over the line outside Bethany, CT. Is she smiling at Daddy? Nope; it's the leaves hanging right above her. I have taught her well.
Below we find Bethany in Cambridge, MA, clearly thinking "MIT RAWKS!"
Finally, the obligatory photo in front of a Bethany, CT, sign. Apparently she is not impressed with the sign, probably because the parade is going by behind me. Check out the snazzy (relatively) new Bethany Town Hall in the background.