Dust to Dust

There was a burial this morning, out in the country and the hot Texan sun. While we were waiting for everyone to arrive I talked with one of the gravediggers. He had a shamrock tattooed on his wrist and I asked him if he was Irish.

"Yes sir, I am," he replied, sounding entirely Texan, "I used to have red in my beard, but now it's grey." We had something in common. "My hair used to be brown, "I told him, "Now look at it." The gravediggers thought that was funny and stomped about laughing.

What can I say, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, but let's not forget the sure and certain hope in the resurrection. After the burial was over and everyone was leaving, an elderly gentleman told me he'd shot five Cottonmouths in the last few weeks, but he hadn't seen a rattler.

RS, rest in peace and rise in glory.

LSP

Spot The Snake

Can you see the snake? Tricky, isn't it, because it's well camouflaged. But look closely, with the aid of a helpful red circle, and you'll see a few inches of the serpent slithering into a metal pipe.

You can just pick it out between the box spring and the pipe. Of course other snakes are far easier to spot.

One of them's running for President.

LSP

You Plinker!

Some say that a dinner of roast quail and venison sausage, rifle to table, helps you shoot better the next day at the range. I drove out into the Texan countryside with my philisophical pal, GWB, to find out.

We took along a couple of scoped Ruger .22s, an American and a 10/22, representing the bolt and the semi side of the rimfire world. And a couple of pistols, a Sig and a Glock, chambered for 9mm and .45. But what about the quail and venison theory of marksmanship, how did that stand up, in the real world?

If a metal kettle, a plastic Folgers container, steel plates and turkey, at 75 and 100 yards, are anything to go by, the theory holds true. Down went the opposition, with a vengeance. I claim the best pistol shot of the day, hitting the kettle at 75 yards with the Glock. Sorry, kettle, you lose. I never much liked you anyway.

Shoot over, GWB wanted to check out the land behind the range for what he calls "native Texan grasses." That excitement over, I spotted a piece of metal, shining in the hot spring sun. "Look at that, you see it, glinting in the sun?" I asked my Wittgensteinian ally, "Maybe it's a piece of UFO debris. Let's have a look."

It wasn't a bit of space junk, annoyingly, just an old air conditioner that someone had dumped. And as I reflected on the higher implications of that, a long rattlesnake uncoiled silently from beneath the rusting metal and made its way, gliding and deadly, into a nearby pipe. Moral of the story?

Quail and venison help you shoot. This is now settled science. Also, don't be a dimwit when you go for a nature ramble in Texas, it's not Devon, or the Cotswolds. Take a gun, you might need it, and be careful poking around in space junk, who knows what killers might lurk within.

Shoot straight,

LSP