Crawdads, and Rattlers, and Porn. . . Oh, My!

When your family moves, it shakes up your life.  These seismic shifts can be a subtle tremor if you're moving across town, or a 4.0 tooth rattler if you move to a different city in the same region.  Or, you could experience a 7.1 earthquake/tsunami/Fukushima-meltdown kind of move.  Back in the late '70's, when I was around 8 years old, our family experienced that kind of quake.  We moved from Chicago, IL to Yukon, OK.

To put it in perspective, let's look at some of the differences. . .

	Chicago	Yukon
Population in 1980	~3,500,000	~15,000
Region	Midwest	Cowboy
Boot Style	Snow	Cowboy
Music	Eclectic	Cowboy
Accent	Normal	Cowboy
Famous People	Lots	Garth Brooks
Sports	Many pro teams	Amateur rodeo
Beverages	Pop	Coke*

*This was perhaps the weirdest cultural change I experienced.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I heard a lot of, "stop making fun of cowboy boots and country music" from my parents.  But I was completely freaked out by the use of the term "Coke."  Here's how it worked:

Waitress:  "What can I get for you, Honey?"
Oklahoman:  "I'd like the chicken fingers and fries."
Waitress:  "And what would you like to drink?"
Oklahoman:  "Large Coke."
Waitress:  "What kind?"
Oklahoman:  "7-Up."

For real.  That's how it worked.  "Coke" meant any carbonated beverage.  "I'll have a Coke."  "What kind?"  "Pepsi."  How fucked up is that?!?

Anyway, after we moved, I did what any red-blooded American kid does when introduced to new surrounds.  I started to explore.  Having never been interested in flora, I focused entirely on the fauna never before seen by a Chicago kid's eyes.  And while it sucked being away from Bears, Bulls, Cubs, and Blackhawks, Yukon provided enough zoological variety to keep me occupied for years.

SPECIMEN 1:  GRASSHOPPERS

"What's the big deal?  There are grasshoppers in Chicago."  True.  There are little green grasshoppers in Chicago.  But in Oklahoma, they are scaled up, browned up, and meaned up.  Like this:


And from my memory, they would attack you.  Like this:

"Die, Human!  YAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!"

They also created this kind of spit we called "tobacco juice."  It was a sticky, reddish-brown fluid they would gack out of their mouth.  It looked just like what a Bubba would spit onto the sidewalk after enjoying his chaw.  I would like to say that I never tasted the stuff.  But I won't.  'Cause I can't.

SPECIMEN 2:  CRAWDADS

Also known as crayfish, or crawfish, or crawdaddys, crawdads were one of the most foreign species I encountered on a very regular basis.  I think there were some of these up North, but I had never run into them.  They looked like miniature lobsters, and they were prolific in the creeks and water holes that surrounded our little subdivision.
Here's one of the little buggers:

"I'm crushing your head!"  (loosely translated from Crawdaddian)

My brother and I used to wander off into vacant lots and creeksides, take off our shoes, roll up our jeans (this fact becomes important with another species later in this post), and wander into the water to catch us some crawdads.  We would put some bologna on a hook, dangle it in front of the crawdad, and they would latch on.  I was convinced as a child that they just couldn't resist bologna.  Now that I think of it, I'm not so sure that it was the taste so much as the fact that a giant piece of processed meat was slapping them in the head.  I don't particularly like the taste, but I'm guessing I would attack an eight foot slab of pastrami if it was being smacked upside my face.

Once they grabbed on to the aquatic Lunchable, we would yank them violently out of the water.  From there, they would be caught and dropped in a five gallon bucket with a little water in it.  In no time at all, they were joined by several of their brothers-in-claws.  What do you think that was like?  You're crawling around the bottom of a creek, and the next thing you know, you're in a stark white container with a menacing monster-child dropping your friends on your head.  Nightmarish, to say the least.  Our catches victims would usually end up sold to other kids, released back into the wild, or given to a neighbor down the street who had a miniature wildlife refuge in his backyard.  Or he ate them.  Don't know.

SPECIMEN 3:  HORNY TOADS

Horny toads were everywhere.  And these things spit blood out of their eyes at you.  Blood.  Out of their eyes.  Yeah, that's normal.

I don't think I need to say any more.  I loved these things.  LOVED.


SPECIMEN 4:  STANDARD TOADS



I need to buy this album.

Toads are everywhere, so the only interesting thing about this is how I would catch them.  We lived in a fairly new subdivision, so a lot of the yards were unfinished, including ours.  Since the dirt and stuff wasn't built up, there were gaps exposed under the concrete poured for the driveway, sidewalk, and front steps.  These itty bitty caves were just big enough to fit my arm.  I would lay on the ground and stick my arm in as far as I could.  I would feel around in the dirt and rocks until I felt anything moving or soft.  As soon as I did, I would grab on and pull out whatever it was.  Inevitably, the soft lump would prove to be a toad.  Again, my catches victims would usually end up sold to other kids, released back into the wild, or given to a neighbor down the street who had a miniature wildlife refuge in his backyard.  Or he ate them.  Don't know.

In case you haven't figured it out, this method of trapping toads was incredibly stupid due to. . .


SPECIMEN 5: RATTLESNAKES

Now this is something that definitely wasn't hanging around your backyard in northern Illinois.  They were common enough down in Oklahoma for kids to receive training in school.  It was similar to gun training for children.  "If you find a gun, don't touch it."  "If you see one, leave the area and tell an adult that you found a gun."  "Even if you cut a gun's head off with a hoe, it can still shoot you."  You get the picture.

On one of our many crawdad hunting adventures, my brother and I were heading home through an undeveloped lot.  There I was, walking along with my bucket, when my brother stopped and said, "whoa."  I instinctively stopped.  "What?"  "Look," he pointed.  About six feet in front of me was a snake.  I didn't know what kind it was, nor did I care.  This was going to be awesome.  I was going to catch me a snake.  I'm sure my brother knew that it was a rattlesnake, which makes the following fairly disturbing.

I started to approach my prize.

Brother:  "What the hell are you doing?"
Me:  "I'm gonna catch this snake."
Brother:  "You're an idiot.  I'm going home."

And off he went.  I'm pretty sure my brother left me to die in that dirt field.  Oh well, it would have been Darwinian.

As my brother walked away, I approached my prey.  It was only when I got a couple feet away that I realized what it was.  Holy shit!  It's a rattlesnake!  This thought wasn't followed by RUN!, but by This is going to be even MORE awesome when I catch it!  I'll be a hero!  I walked right up to my catch to set up the snare.  Keep in mind that we were crawdad hunting.  Which meant what?  That's right.  No shoes, no socks, jeans rolled up to the knees.  I had had my shoes in my left hand and the bucket in my right.  I set my shoes down, then set the bucket down right next to the rattlesnake's head.

It didn't move.  I stepped back and looked around, trying to figure out what to do next.  Behind the snake, there was a two-foot stick.  I walked around the back of the snake and grabbed the stick.  I snapped it in two over my knee and walked back around to face the snake.   With a foot-long stick in each hand, I neared my prize.  I bent over, grabbed its head with the sticks chopstick style, and tried to lift the rattlesnake up off the ground.  I tried this a few times before I finally got a good hold and raised it aloft.

I couldn't tell you the snake's exact dimensions, but with the head lifted up to my eye level, its tail still didn't clear the top of the bucket.  So I did what anyone would have done.  I lifted it higher.  Naturally, this brought the head of the snake a few inches in front of, and about a foot above my head.  I eased it closer to the bucket.  I got its tail past the rim when I lost my grip on the snake's head.  It fell.  But not in the bucket.

It landed right in front of my naked feet, which were connected to my naked ankles, which were connected to my naked calves.  Fortunately, it got a little twisted on its descent and was facing away from me.  That didn't last long.  Very quickly after the rattlesnake hit the ground, it turned back in my direction, coiled up, hissed, reared back, and rattled.  It looked like this:




Note: My snake did not wear a cowboy hat, a bandolier, or have a gun at the end of its tail.  Nor did it star in "Rango."  But it looked just as scary.

Finally, that RUN! thought rose to the surface, and I followed its command.  I was gone like a bullet.  Sans shoes, sans socks, sans bucket.  I was too scared to go back and get my stuff, so I told my parents that I outgrew my shoes and had to throw them away.

I never ran across another rattlesnake while I was down there, but I did try to catch a cottonmouth with a fishing net.  I'm not a quick learner.

And finally. . .

SPECIMEN 6:  BEAVERS

There was a 7-11 convenience store a few blocks away from our house.  Behind the store was an overgrown wooded area.  In my childhood mind, this area possessed both the size and dread of a Blair Witch style forest.


"I just wanted a Watchamacallit."

Rumors had it that these woods were haunted.  By teenagers.  They would hang out back there to smoke, and drink, and set booby traps, and sharpen their Chinese Throwing Death Stars.  Just waiting for unsuspecting kids to enter their lair.  Entering this lot during the day was very concerning.  After the streetlights came on?  Insane.

One day, when feeling particularly brave due to numbers, a group of us kids walked into the woods of death.  Every oddly angled branch was a previously deployed snare.  Every nick in a tree was where a throwing star was pulled out after passing through a child's chest.  Near the center of the lot was a small clearing.  Scattered about were cigarette butts and weird, squarish bottles with labels that I didn't recognize (although I became very familiar in college).  And that's when one of my friends introduced me to the strangest creature of all.  The beaver.


"Holy cow, guys.  Look at this."

Strewn about the dirt were ripped-out pages from dirty magazines.  It was hard for my eight year old brain to figure out what the hell was going on in the photos.  Some were just naked women splayed out on motorcycles.  Others were photos of naked men and women fighting.  At least that's all I could process.  There were some close-ups that I couldn't even figure out which direction to orient the photo.  It might as well have been a surgical photo.  I was terrified and intrigued and perplexed and warm and happy and oh my god.

The group quickly split into two factions.  Faction 1 was the "get the hell out of here" group.  Faction 2 was the "stay as long as humanly possible" group.  Due to a deathly fear of teenagers, I fell into Faction 1 and hightailed it out of there.  It wasn't until a year later, when Showtime showed the Miss Nude USA Pageant on a Saturday afternoon that I was reintroduced to the elusive beaver.  God bless Showtime.


EPILOGUE

Earlier this year, I drove from Illinois to California.  I spent the first night in Yukon, OK.  I drove by our old house, the field where I tried to catch the snake, and I called my wife from the parking lot of the 7-11 with the woods in back.

Yukon has nearly doubled in size.  The yard at the house is built up enough to prevent adventurous children from jabbing their hands into questionable areas.  The crawdad and snake field is a truck repair warehouse.  The 7-11 woods are still there.  It isn't nearly as large or wooded as I remember.  But I think I saw a teenager polishing a throwing star. . .