{"id":3699,"date":"2006-04-28T17:21:08","date_gmt":"2006-04-28T22:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2006\/04\/28\/springtime-in-west-texas\/"},"modified":"2024-09-20T17:56:44","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T22:56:44","slug":"springtime-in-west-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2006\/04\/28\/springtime-in-west-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"Springtime in West Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Spring means different things to different people, but to quite a few folks in this part of the country, it means time to start watching out for rattlesnakes.<\/p>\n<p>Take the fellow in Abilene (a couple of hours northeast of here), for example, who was using a forklift to clean up Patterson Drilling&#8217;s yard. He picked up a pit* liner and immediately set it back down, phoned the office and said &#8220;we need some men with shotguns.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to the report, they killed 62 rattlers&#8230;but as many got away as they shot.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #ccc; width: 640px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/images\/fireant\/rattlers2006.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of dead rattlesnakes in Abilene, Texas\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Now, I&#8217;m all in favor of live and let live when it comes to giving the occasional slithering reptile the freedom to keep the place free of rats and other vermin, but <em>nobody<\/em> needs twelve dozen rattlesnakes.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"smaller\">*Gives a whole new meaning to the term &#8220;pit viper,&#8221; doesn&#8217;t it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Tip o&#8217;the hat to <acronym title=\"My Lovely Bride\">MLB<\/acronym> who also expressed an ever-so-slight bit of sympathy for &#8220;the poor poisonous little guys.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Springtime, and a young man&#8217;s fancy turns to thoughts of pit vipers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,29,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-nature-medicine","category-west-texas","category-wildlife-snakes","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3699"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14281,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3699\/revisions\/14281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}