WORLD NEWS UPDATE

Just because this blog has no electricity or gasoline or hope for the future or Cheez-Its, that does not mean we are just sitting around wallowing in self-pity. We realize that important non-Wilma news is breaking, and we are working hard to bring you the top stories of the day, as well as our insightful analysis. Our analysis in this case is: Yikes.

Comments

[queensbee]

i say yikes too. i mean, snakes, outdoors in a cornfield .... guess it couldnt find the toilet.
hope you all get the power turned on again... sigh. i guess this is starting to get old.

[Aunt Nancy]

*looks out the window at the cornfield across the street*

*decides to check toilets very carefully before sitting*

[Not Sayin']

I'm so happy to say that I've never been poked with a combine...

[Eleanor]

"escaped in July" and it just turned up??? WTF?
Where has it been? Did it take a vacation? Go on a cruise? Road trip?

Inquiring minds want to know.....

Hi Dave, hope everything's OK...

[insomniac]

There's eleven foot snakes in the meadow!
There's eleven foot snakes in the meadow!
I thought 'it's a tire' but soon did I find
That a gigantic python began to unwind!

Oh, what a horrific morning
Give us a reptilian break
I've got a suspicious feeling
That neighbor's not 'missing' his snake

If you see something start to uncoil, it
might be in your backyard, or your toilet
Don't ignore your old instincts, just try 'flight or fight'.
I know I would be clocked at nine-tenths speed of light!

(chorus)

[rita]

Shoot, the man had a combine; why just poke it? Why not run over the stinking thing?

[LabSpecimen]

Rita, that's exactly what I did when I came across that litter of puppies in my corn field. There must have been six or seven of them, all crawling around, suckling on their mother. It was pretty scary until... *WHUMP* *SPLAT*

[Bumble]

I second Aunt Nancy's comment. *shudder*

"There's more than corn in Indiana..."

[crossgirl]

run for your life, they're everywhere, they're everywhere!! no place is safe!

wait a minute....perhaps they'd make a useful alternative fuel source.

[mykepredko]

The Channel 5 Eyewitness news team doesn't seem all that "perky" - if anything I would say "drugged" by low grade pharacuticals.

The other options include demonic posession or they have been zombified. This is the right time of the year for it.

myke

[doug doots]

Perhaps the old boy was seeking an alligator.

[doug doots]

Is that a python in your combine, or are just happy to see me?

[Mr. Completely]

It took three months to go a mile? Does this snake work for FEMA?

[Schadeboy]

Snake Combine might bagnfarb.

[tropichunt.com guy™]

Quote (but not Key): Paullina (paw-LEE"nuh)

Well (wel), duh (duh)! Idiots (French)!

*** I have nothing against the French. Really. ***

[Now: John E]

I wonder (wun'-dur) how Schuknecht (SHOOK'-neck) of Paullina (paw-LEE"nuh) picked up the snake to put it in a box (bocks).

[MOTW]

Fred Schuknecht ==>
Fed retch chunks
Hush, FTC redneck

[slyeyes]

You wouldn't normally think of a combine as a poking device.

[rita]

Okay, Lab, not quite the same thing there.

Puppies=cute.

Snake=crush.

[Sallyacious]

I don't claim to have huge amounts of farming experience, but I thought a combine was a great big piece of mechanized equipment. One of those really big things you see farmers driving through the fields. So how do you "poke" a snake with something like that without the machine chewing it up and baling it?

[Aunt Nancy]

rita - speaking as a Midwest farmperson, I must tell you that running over a python with a combine is not a good idea. A combine can cost upwards of $250,000 new (IANMTU) and any non-grain objects that try to pass through it will seriously damage the machine. I suggest crushing the python with the semi-trailer grain truck that's following the combine. More wheels, more weight, more damage to the snake.

[Mr. Completely]

Auntie,

Okay, I give up. What's "IANMTU" mean?

[Aunt Nancy]

I = I
A = Am
N = Not
M = Making
T = This
U = Up

[Charlotte]

Betcha he didn't have too many rabbits, mice or any other vermin in his field. Happy snake, happy farmer. Don't see a problem.

[rita]

A.N., I should have known that it wouldn't be a good idea to try to combine (pronounced COMbine for you non-farm-people-types) a big snake. But you see, it would have been my ex-husband's combine that would tear it up, so I really wasn't thinking clearly.

I guess I was just thinking evil thoughts his way.

[pogo]

Rita and Sally - Aunt N is pretty much right. The farmer would have a "corn head" mounted on the combine. There are other heads for other crops. This thing pulls the corn stalks into the machine where the ears are stripped off and the corn is shucked and shelled into a hopper. It doesn't bale - that's a different machine.

I would guess the guy shut off the power to the head and then just poked the snake with the metal housing on the head. You wouldn't take a chance of damaging the machine, especially not when your are trying to get the crop out.

[rita]

Charlotte: The problem was that a snake was in the field. See?

[rita]

Pogo, I know that a combine doesn't bale things.

Hay wagons bale things.

[LabSpecimen]

snakes = useful
puppies = pee-pee machines

[queensbee]

Look, we obviously aint farmers.... the pernt is: there was a snake in the field. yeah, so. i'm a city girl............but i think snakes should all be outside in some field. if it eats rodents, then the corn wont be ruined. what is the problem here? aside from snakes are yukky.

[Mr. Completely]

Aunt Nancy,

I knew that... (slapping forehead - "d'oh!")

[crossgirl]

the problem is that it was an 11ft python not a rat snake. the farm costs could be considerable considering it could damage the ComBine AND eat the cattle. or sheep. or small children. or whatever else it is you raise on farms. the rodents are just hordouvres.

[just sayin']

oooh .. just wonderful. now i have this mental image of mouse pate .. lil' feets sticking out!
ewww

[rita]

puppies=cute

snake=eeeeek

[LabSpecimen]

If you've got cattle and sheep in your corn field, sounds like you have a much bigger problem than an 11' python.

[Aunt Nancy]

just sayin' - I once had a nightshirt with a Boynton cartoon cat on it. The cat was playing the guitar and singing:

"Love to eat them mousies,
Mousies what I love to eat.
Bite they little heads off,
Nibble on they tiny feet."

[Aunt Nancy]

Oh, and BTW: both snakes and cats can control a farm's rodent population.

cats = cute and cuddly
snakes = yuck

[LabSpecimen]

Burmese cannot eat cattle or sheep. It would be perfectly happy on a diet of rodents. A bunny would satisfy it for a couple of weeks.

That said, I'm *against* having large snakes as pets. They eventually get too big and expensive for the owner, and then they "escape" into a corn field where it's too cold at night. The only thing crueler than killing a snake is mistreating it.

[Down in Texas]

We need a new blog from Dave...this one is getting reallllly stale. We have beat this snake story into the ground.

[LabSpecimen]

Here's a quote from ABC News:
Estimates of the number of songbirds killed each year by feral cats in Wisconsin alone range from 8 million to 217 million, though the number is actually believed to be around 39 million, said Steven Oestreicher, the chairman of the congress.

cats = death machines
any non-native animal released in the wild = idiotic behavior
native wildlife = good for all of us
cattle in a corn field = a good start to a bbq (just add potato)

[Mike "Mad's Dork" Weasel]

No Cheez-Its?!? Those slow-acting FEMA bastards!

[insomniac]

aunt nancy - the cat playing the guitar (singing the song about mousies) was drawn by B.Kliban

[Christobol]

I forgot how careful Dave is in his word choices:

"that does not mean we are just sitting around wallowing in self-pity."

No, not just that, certainly.
Also getting really, really drunk!

[scat]

Seems to me we need to put those feral cats to work on this giant python problem.

Maybe I've led to urban a life but I never knew pythons lived in North America. Thanks, Dave, for education at its finest.

Feral cats = death machines
American pythons = cat food
Cattle in corn fields = future fuel for my car.

[scat]

Other fascinating and TRUE stuff I've got to get off my chest:

My pharmacist used to like her name: Katrina.

My son's school bus driver's name is Fema.

I wish I could come up with a joke to tie this together.

[Annie Where-but-here]

Dave will be happy to hear that the pythons, boas, and other sundry 'ex-pets' that now reside in the Everglades made it through the hurricane just ducky....although most of their food source was washed away, so they're moving into urban areas in search of food. This morning an 8-foot burmese python was spotted near Kissimmee with a sign that said, "Will squish for Cheetos."

[just sayin']

(gotta agree with LS here .. exotic pets, are, with a precious few exceptions, not a good choice for domestic house pets. they jus' aint! so there ;p)

bot

Mikey! .. Dave is out of Cheetos!! .. let's take up a collection .. we can air-drop Cheetos n beer!
(sorry Dave .. don't think gasoline will "fly")

[just sayin']

*ohlordsnork*
(that would be Cheez-Its X 2)

*blush*

[snake]

like i ASKED to be uprooted from my home and be kept in a stinkin house as a pet!

[LabSpecimen]

Hey Scat, don't know if you were kidding or being serious, but pythons are not native to North America. The only large snakes are the rubber boas and rosy boas. However, the Florida Everglades have proven to be ideal habitat for the python, and when people illegally release their pet snakes in that area, the snake has a good chance of surviving and growing up to 20' in length.

I'm hoping to find one when I get down that way next year.

[just sayin']

hey AN! .. loved that cartoon;)

[just sayin']

(((bangi!!!)))

[Charlotte]

I like snakes. Have one of my own. He's only about 3 feet long though. I still have a hard time figuring out how people loose them. Ours just hangs out, of course, he's in an aquarium with a locking lid, so...

[Aunt Nancy]

insom - thanks for the correction. I received that shirt from my brother as a Christmas gift in (I think) 1976 and, being the impressionable child that I was, all I could remember was the poem and not its author. By the mid-1980's I'd waaaaay outgrown that shirt and it became a shop rag in my dad's garage.

*sniffle*

scat - I thought the pythons ate the cats.

[Sallyacious]

LabSpecimen - What about feather boas? Or are those native to France?

[Annie Where-but-here]

They're native to West Hollywood. They're not poisonous, but they can be suffocating.

[Jacki]

I'm with 'just saying' that the immediate priority, ignored by many on this blog, should be providing Dave with Cheeze-Its.

Judi, Dave, just post an address (PO will be fine) and I'm sure we can have you back in the cracker snacking business in no time, orange fingers and all.

[scat]

Lab, even I'm not sure if I was serious. Seriously, I'm almost never sure if I'm serious or not. As my 10 year old says, I'm seriously joking. :-)

[U.O]

A friend of mine combined a rattlesnake once ... since he often hunts them in the late fall or early winter ... "milking" them for their venom, which can earn you quite a few $ ... he reached in (the snake was caught in the sieves [a part of the machine that sifts and sorts the wheat from the chaff, literally] and the snake -- having passed thru the rapidly rotating (1,200 rpm) cylinder WAS STILL ALIVE ENOUGH TO BITE HIM!!! He survived, but it was touch and go, since he's also allergic to anti-venin treatments ...

This was a 2-foot rattler ... what would an 11-foot boa do? Squish the semi-trailer that follows the combine?

Just wonderin' ...

[Sallyacious]

Annie-Where-but-here:

**SNORK!**

[Annie Where-but-here]

My first "SNORK"! I'm so flattered! Thanks, Sallyacious! I was just wondering to myself, "Wilma" jokes be funny to anyone besides me....

[Ivory Bill Woodpecker]

"The Rubber Boas" WBAGNFARB!

Also: "Puppies. Why did it have to be puppies?"

(betcha thought I was gonna say "snakes" again, dinncha?)

[Bangi]

((((((((((((((((Jus Sayin)))))))))))))))))

[Bumble]

After seeing the above post on 3 threads, let me be the first to say, Kill the spammers! With snakes! Or combines!

[tragdahl]

Speaking of 10 year olds - I had a group of them , one boy & seven girls, telling ghost stories around a bonfire Saturday night, and the boy declared: "I'm serious, this is a TRUE story, I read it in a book about famous ghosts!" Don't you just love 'em at that age, before they start to get self-conscious and stuff.

[Guin]

I had that Kliban poster all the way through high school, and even brought it to college with me freshman year. I wish they still manufactured it.