There’s lots of snakes in Florida. Growing up, we were told to leave them alone, on the theory that either the snake was not poisonous, in which case it eats pests, or else is poisonous, in which case it can hurt you (and it also eats pests).

We had a “snake gun” — a double-barreled 20-gauge — that could do a lot of damage to a snake from a prudent distance. I only saw it used twice on snakes. Once, there was a biggish rattler coiled up in our front garden; my mom got us all behind her, squatted down and took careful aim, and pulled both triggers at once. It knocked her right over, but it cut the rattler into many pieces. Another time, what looked like a moccasin was poking its head out of the water near the shore, and Dad shot the head.

We preserved a couple of snakes in formaldehyde, at least till it evaporated. I happened across a small rattler resting on the back step, called Mom, and she killed it with a hoe. Another time, my brothers (something like 8 and 6 years old) found a 40-inch coral snake in the grove. I think it was winter, and cold enough that it wasn’t very active. One brother ran home to get mom, they carried it home on a stick and dropped it onto the concrete porch, then poured ammonia and bleach in a puddle around it to gas it.

The south half of the property (originally, a second lot) was, I was told, covered in palmettos before my parents moved there. My great-grandfather gave them the property on the condition that they bulldoze all the palmettos off of it, because it was apparently well known that palmettos were filled with snakes that would bite his freshly born great-grandson. They were duly piled, burnt, and buried, but the lot was soon covered by wild grape vines that were equally good at harboring snakes. My cousin sat on one (not poisonous) once playing hide and seek (blew his cover) and years later when it was time to clear it, again, for pasture, I stepped right over a moccasin while chopping vines with a machete. I was quite rattled, but a machete chops snakes, too.

More years later, the grove was gone, and an adult retirement community had replaced it, and our neighbors spread piles of birdseed. Birdseed is also rat food, and rats are snake food. I think I was home for Christmas, and we got a phone call telling us to “come quick, we’ve got snakes in our yard”. Must be poisonous snakes, so I grab the gun and a pocket full of shells, thinking “how the heck am I going to do this without getting into trouble?” Get there, and find that it’s just a pair of rat snakes, one so tame that I could grab it by the tail, and it coiled up on my hand. Stuck it in a paper sack and dumped it on our woodpile. Snake #2 was a little more aggressive, but we hoisted him into a sack with a broom.

About half of it once belonged to my great-grandfather. The nearest pavement was 1/2 mile away, across soupy sand (think dry fluffy beach sand). We learned to get a car unstuck by the time I was about eight, or so I recall (boards and shovels, dig out under the drive wheels, jam the boards in so they can get traction on something). Our parents got standard poodles to act as trouble-finding dogs, and they were great. Loyal as anything; if we took off in the rowboat without them (we had about a 2-acre pond in our backyard) they would swim out to the boat and climb in. One of the dogs survived something like three different snakebite incidents; standard poodles are big, tough dogs. We would sometimes go exploring in the grove, but not too much. One direction, there was a dry sinkhole, with some tangerine trees (their fruit was not that good) and an old irrigation shed up a hill. Another direction, was some big oak trees shading some beehives, and if we kept on going, another irrigation shed. That one was (originally) my great-grandfather’s, 200 feet deep, and it pumped sulfur water. Healthy enough to drink (lots of people lived on it in Florida) but stinky, especially when you sprayed it in the air. We were always a little wary of the sheds, because we were worried about snakes (diamondbacks, mostly, though we also had moccasins and coral snakes) and we were also worried about old bags of parathion, which was evil deadly stuff.

Parathion wasn’t used much. It’s deadly stuff, and the grove was specifically posted for “don’t even set foot in here” for about two weeks after they spray it. I have no idea who they got to drive the sprayers, or how they were dressed. Most of the time, what they sprayed was oil-and-sulfur, which would control scale, and also (I realized years later, after getting a whiff of nostalgia from a bag of sulfur) gave the whole grove a slightly sulfurous smell. I just grew up with it, and never noticed when I was young. One thing that you would notice, is when the citrus trees go into bloom. That was fabulous.

The grove was mostly oranges (valencias and pineapples) but my ggf had planted a “fancy fruit row” which was better than anything I’ve ever seen in the store, anywhere. I’m not entirely sure what they were. Sometimes I see familiar-looking fruit in a store, but when I buy it (rarely, nowadays) I am always disappointed. My ggf, or the previous owner of the grove, had planted some Duncan grapefruit, which were also for personal use on account of (begin whiny voice) they’ve got see-eeds (end whiny voice) so nobody would buy them, so no stores would sell them. Ugh. People are idiots. Yes, their taste was (and is) superior.

About a half-mile from our house, out near the school bus stop, were some avocados. Again, personal use, because there were only a few. My dad would pick the ones he could reach. The grove pickers would climb the tree, pick them, and toss them down to a catcher wearing gloves. Grove-picking looked like a pretty hard life, and tree-ripened avocados are a treat, and probably good for you too. One problem was that buzzards also like avocados, and they would take a few pecks out of quite a few fruit, leaving it not at all fit for human consumption.

There are times that I wonder if we have things slightly backwards now. I recall many visits to the emergency room, none of them associated with the hazards that people seem to worry about now.

Three stitches in my chin at age 3, obtained by running around the house in circles and stumbling into the corner of a coffee table.

(Seven?) stitches at age 6 or 7, stepping into a mudhole to prove there was no broken glass in it. Courageous and sincere, but wrong.

14 stitches in my knee at 9, standing on the top of a big bottle soaking the labels off some recycling; slipped off, and hit my knee on the busted-off spigot. Ouch.

A few more stitches in my foot at age 12 (more glass at the pond); I had to track an escaped cow a couple of mile through an orange grove a few days later, the tetanus shot in my arm hurt more than my foot.

At seventeen, eleven stitches in the back of my head, some damage to my left shoulder, and a fractured skull. Go ahead, don’t wear that bicycle helmet, I’ll just say I-told-you-so when something similar happens to you.

Nasty rope burn at 20. Back then, ibuprofen was a prescription drug, and it was a miracle (opiates never did much for me).

A couple of rounds of stitches in gradual school; don’t remember exactly when I did what, but I almost took the tip of my ring finger off sharpening a knife (still have the knife, just used it a couple of minutes ago to slice biscotti), and then I slashed my thumb thoroughly whittling ineptly. You can stop arterial bleeding with pressure, at least for those arteries.

I was stitch-free for some years, then I fell while skating, and put ten stitches in my forehead. That was scary, but the doctor in the ER helpfully told me that if you remember the “clunk” of your head hitting something, you’re probably fine. Wound care advice that nobody told me before (why, I know not): wash daily with peroxide, then a light coat of triple antibiotic, and keep it out of the sun. The scarring is vastly reduced.

Got distracted by my youngest while pruning something, and pruned my left middle knuckle. That wound care advice worked again.