Life of Nobody

[Adios]

I used to survey in the black water swamps south of Kissimmee, Florida. All day we carried machete's  and chain saws so we could cut line for the instrument to see the next point. Anyone who knows anything about swamps knows there are BAD things that live there. Things that can hurt, maim or even kill you. We would wade around in water so black you couldn't even see an inch below the surface. You never knew what the next step would bring.


Sure, once in a while we would happen upon dry places, well relatively dry. These places were no safer than the water, in fact possibly even more dangerous. We had found one such place once and we were exhausted as one can get in 90 plus degree heat without a breath of wind and 100% humidity. As we were all resting trying to catch our breath I felt a slight sting on my right foot.


I looked down and a pygmy rattler had managed to get one fang through my boot. I used my machete to get him off of my boot and chopped his head off and sat down and promptly got sick. We were about 5 miles from the trucks so the crew just waited until I felt better then we headed back. Day was over anyway. It only took about an hour to lose the effects of the snake bite and I was relieved it wasn't an eastern diamondback or worse a cottonmouth.


Bees were the worst. One of the crew was in the lead and was cutting through palmetto bush and hit a bumblebee nest that was in the ground.  The sky turned black and we all took off, except the lead man fell. He was stung several times but 13 times in the face. We went to see him in the hospital. He didn't have a face. It was swollen beyond any human recognition. He was in the hospital for three weeks. He recovered just fine.


Another one of the crew was bitten in the right hand by a cottonmouth. His right arm from the elbow down just died. There was no meat, just skin covering the bone. He lived but never recovered.

The lead man was always switched out so we all took turns. It seems gators like to take their tails and make deep holes so if there is a dry spell the gator holes still have water in them. These holes average about twenty feet deep and if you step in one all you can do is wait to hit bottom and kick back up. No one ever got hurt when this happened but it was pretty scary. Good times. Fortunately this was a rare incident.

[Jasper]

Hawk, holy shit.  Dude.

Aren't you guys allowed to carry antivenom on you?

[Adios]

Hawk, holy shit.  Dude.

Aren't you guys allowed to carry antivenom on you?

In the mid to late '70's we didn't know what that was.

[Jasper]

Damn.

[Jenne]

Fuck.  That's...some terrible shit.   But the writing's great, Hawk.  Glad you're sharing this, harsh though it may be.

[Adios]

Thanks Jenne. Didn't mean for it to be harsh. We were all wild and young and I guess we just accepted it for what it was.

[Adios]

One day all 4 crews were in one place ( a rare thing) and my friend Pancho pulled a .357 and put a round between my feet. I kind of snapped and charged him. We fought for about 30 minutes without either of us getting the upper hand and finally we had to quit because we were too damn tired to continue.

The field supervisor and the office supervisor had been making bets on the winner and everybody else was just watching and cheering. I had a black eye but had left my teeth marks on Panchos arm and we both had sever other marks. Then the whole damn thing got funny and we laughed about it over beers.

It was the last time Pancho ever shot at me.

[BadBeast]

Just goes to show that there are places still  (assuming it hasn't been drained, and built over) that are not conducive to people .
Bio-diversity has become another word for "Hostile to Humans".
Swamps are always the last areas to get built on. Mosquitoes are the guardians of these places . Gators are just cool.  A 357 is a bad way to start a fight. Fists and teeth are a great way to end one though.
And the point, for me, is that what at first seems like a good reason to beat seven bales of shit out of one another, half an hour later, is no more than something to laugh about.

Scenes of "Southern Comfort" rise to my inner eye.

edit: And I love the surreal backwardness of a fight, being started with a gun, then immediately de-escalating into a one on one brawling fistfight. Especially since the popular stereotype of  "Americans with guns" paints a different picture, usually  starting with a punch, and ending with a bullet.

[Adios]

Just goes to show that there are places still  (assuming it hasn't been drained, and built over) that are not conducive to people .
Bio-diversity has become another word for "Hostile to Humans".
Swamps are always the last areas to get built on. Mosquitoes are the guardians of these places . Gators are just cool.  A 357 is a bad way to start a fight. Fists and teeth are a great way to end one though.
And the point, for me, is that what at first seems like a good reason to beat seven bales of shit out of one another, half an hour later, is no more than something to laugh about.

Scenes of "Southern Comfort" rise to my inner eye.

edit: And I love the surreal backwardness of a fight, being started with a gun, then immediately de-escalating into a one on one brawling fistfight. Especially since the popular stereotype of  "Americans with guns" paints a different picture, usually  starting with a punch, and ending with a bullet.

Hillbillys have fun in unusual ways.

[Adios]

Oh, and the whole swamp is now a city called Poinciana.

[Adios]

We had a dry land job one day that really didn't require a lot of cutting for line of sight. About a mile into the woods we did however encounter a slight obstacle. An Oak tree. I'm not talking about your garden variety oak tree either. This tree had branches bigger than most trees trunks and the weight carried them to the ground where they then went back up seeking the sun. This tree was directly in out line and the party chief wanted to cut it down. This caused a full crew riot for more than one reason.

The magnificence of the tree was one and the sheer size was a distant second. Four grown men touching fingers around the tree were barely able to close the circle. I couldn't even guess as to the height of the tree.

After much debate we decided to go around it which took quite a bit of work and some time but were were all very satisfied with out days work.

Also on this job we found twenty six foot high potted pot plants. DUDE.

[BadBeast]

We had a dry land job one day that really didn't require a lot of cutting for line of sight. About a mile into the woods we did however encounter a slight obstacle. An Oak tree. I'm not talking about your garden variety oak tree either. This tree had branches bigger than most trees trunks and the weight carried them to the ground where they then went back up seeking the sun. This tree was directly in out line and the party chief wanted to cut it down. This caused a full crew riot for more than one reason.

The magnificence of the tree was one and the sheer size was a distant second. Four grown men touching fingers around the tree were barely able to close the circle. I couldn't even guess as to the height of the tree.

After much debate we decided to go around it which took quite a bit of work and some time but were were all very satisfied with out days work.

Also on this job we found twenty six foot high potted pot plants. DUDE.

I reckon you deserved them, for not cutting down that Oak tree.

[Adios]

Have you ever been really scared? I mean the kind of scared you can't even shit your pants scared.

We found a dry place to rest and were sitting too tired to talk just trying to keep the sweat out of our eyes.

Anyone who has ever been in a swamp can tell you visibility is limited. As we were sitting there suddenly it sounded like trees were being knocked down. There were no animal or machinery sounds at all. The sound was coming from just out of our sight. This sound continued for a full 360 degrees around us never once coming into sight. Once it got back to the original position there was dead silence.

We were unable and too afraid to speak but as we looked at each other the wide open eyes of each of us silently expressed our fear. We sat like this for about 30 minutes and gradually small animal sounds started up again. We sat unspeaking for another hour and then very quietly worked our way back out of the swamp. We looked for some evidence of what had circled and there was nothing. Just nothing. No downed trees. No path with damaged vegetation. Just nothing.

To this day I have no idea what happened and to this day I have no desire to investigate.

So we went back the next day and finished the job.

I told you we were young and crazy.

[Doktor Howl]

Have you ever been really scared? I mean the kind of scared you can't even shit your pants scared.

Yeah, once.  I already talked about it.  I got so scared, I've never been scared since.

[LMNO]

Wendigo, ITT.