About 12 years ago, we were houseboating on Trinity Lake, and the kids saw a small snake in the water. I was on the left side of the boat, and it happened to be swimming right past me, so I had to pick it up. Now everybody knows that when you pick up a snake, you should grab him right behind his head so he can't turn around and stick his tongue out at you disrespectfully. Well I knew that but missed and picked him up closer to the middle of his body. The next five things were very quick, (to imagine how quick say this as fast as you can: "bite, bite, bite, bite, bite") but it seemed to happen in slow motion inside my head. First, the snake turned his little head, stuck his tongue out at me disrespectfully and bit my hand. My brain, quick as a wink said, "Oops, we didn't pick him up right". Second, he bit my hand again. My brain, now moving at the speed of sound said, "I think we should take action". Third, he bit my hand again. My brain, now working like an Intel dual-core 64 bit Pentium processor said "I have calculated with 99.9% accuracy that we should drop the object in our left hand". Fourth, he bit my hand again. My brain, now at light speed, sent a message, "Dearest Hand, please at your earliest convenience, release your grip. All the best, your friend the Brain." Finally he bit my hand a fifth time and I let go. He dropped into the water, swam a bit then turned his little head and stuck his tongue out at me disrespectfully.
Okay, that was stupid, and as Adrienne pointed out probably not such a good example for the children present. Now I'm older and smarter. For example, we saw a brown vine snake here the other day and I grabbed its tail. For such a skinny thing it was surprising how strong he was. Nothing happened; I don't think they bite. But that night, our nephew Matt had a wonderful dream. He was being attacked by a fer-de-lance which is a very dangerous snake. They grow to be about 4 or 5 feet, but in his dream was a seven footer and it was coming right at him. Just as it was about to bite him in the face, his Uncle Mark (me) grabbed the monster by its tail, and yanked hard, saving Matt's life. What a nice dream...
Jungle BallSo what is the most dangerous thing in the Jungle? Snakes, scorpions, biting insects? Nope, its basketball. Last week the three "old and tall" guys (me being the tallest by a bit, and the oldest by far) played the five "young and short" guys. I'd like to say that the rules here are "loose" but there really aren't any rules. Sometimes the game is like Rugby except the ball is round, and the turf is concrete. Actually my knee was really not as bad as it looks, it was just a scab from a previous game that got scratched off on the cement and for some reason bled like crazy. I think it gave me an advantage because the tall old guys won that day.
De-bugging (?) the system.
Those of you who read my earlier blog about the Satellite know that by now, we are experts in dish repair. So the other morning, when the internet went down, I had no worries. I realized that it would take no more than six weeks, $400 or $500 dollars in phone calls to Advanced Technical Support, and some goofing around with antennae aiming programs that we don't really understand. Then it would start working again for some unknown reason. But this problem was different.
The computer reported that the signal strength was only 10%, whereas normally it is around 84%. So, Mateo and I looked at the dish, pushed it around a little bit and called it some names. As a result the signal dropped to 9%. He noticed it was dirty and got some Flash (Central American 409 Cleaner) and cleaned it up, but that didn’t work. Then I thought to look in the emitter. The emitter has a small rectangular hole it that is about 4 or 5 inches deep. I had to get a flashlight to be able to see all the way to the end. There was definitely something there; at first I thought it was a brown leaf.
Then I realized it was a little frog. I coaxed him out with a stick and the signal was back to normal. I hope being radiated by the emitter all night won't give him headaches, or worse cause him to have highly mutated offspring. There are enough weird looking animals around here as it is. 
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