When you live way out in the country there are many strange things to be observed. Being unusually observant, I had noticed some little ground squirrels popping up from holes in my back yard. I had been told that the squirrels had built at least two holes to their underground home. One of the holes was for escaping from unwanted guests like snakes.
So, one day I decided to perform another experiment to see if I could catch me a ground squirrel! I stuck a garden hose in one of the holes, and turned the water on. Sure enough, in a couple of minutes a little ground squirrel popped up from another hole and stood there looking at me and chattering. I couldn�t understand what he was saying, but I�m pretty sure it wasn�t nice. When he got thru telling me off, he ran across the yard and disappeared down into another hole.
Well, I then went and got me a big paper sack so that the
next time one of those cussing rascals popped up I would get him. There were about a dozen ground squirrel holes in the yard so I covered up all of them with shingles except for two of them. I stuck said garden hose in one hole, turned water on and ran to the other hole with my paper sack.
About one minute later not only did that rascal jumped up out of his hole, but he was followed by three more and they all ran right smack dab into my paper sack! I reckon they thought it was a big dry place to hide. I took the sack of ground squirrels down to my office about a block away and put it on top of my desk. I was just going to show my associates how smart I was at catching ground squirrels and then turn the noisy little creatures loose so they could go dig some more holes and be happy again.
Wouldn�t you know, some dang fool with more curiosity than a cat picked my sack up and started opening it up. Well, the poor little varmits had been quiet for a few minutes, but when fool picked up the sack they started chattering all over again. It might near gave him a heart attack and he dropped the sack on the floor! All those ground squirrels went hell for leather in all directions! And you know what they ain�t been found to this day.
The very next day when I came back from lunch there was a great big paper sack on top of my desk. It was bulging so much all around the bottom that I expected something terrible smelly in there, but I gingerly peeked into the sack. Well, it wasn�t anything like I expected and wasn�t terrible at all. It was just a big ole live bull snake that must have been about 6 ft. long. Now if you city folk don�t know what a bull snake looks like I will tell you. It looks almost just like a very dangerous west Texas rattlesnake, but it is as harmless as a new born puppy.
Well, I knew that everybody was hiding down the hall in their offices waiting to see what I would do. So I found me an empty paper sack, blew it up full of air (easy for a Texan to do) so that it looked just like the one they had put on my desk. I took said sack down the hall and found two city slicker clerks sitting at their desks pretending they didn�t know anything about a snake in a sack on my desk. I had my handy Boy Scout knife open, jumped into their office and slit that empty sack open and threw it down on the floor. Both those guy went directly from their chairs to the top of their desks faster than a streak of lightening!
You know what? It took me about fifteen minutes to convince them that the sack I threw down was empty! As a matter of fact, I couldn�t get them to come down until I went and got the snake in the sack. I had to reach in and bring that poor old bull snake out and hold it up in the air so they would know where it was. When I did that one of them almost fainted so I decided it was time to stop the snake play so I took him out and turned him loose.