After the first evening of a rather self-destructive (and yet somehow productive) weekend, I went and got my hair cut on Saturday. As I walked in, my notable barber was discussing one of the things that I’ve never found that enjoyable – camping out. Several times I have been camping, and not just because I am a city-boy, the experiences I had never seemed to live up to the golden glory of the Great-American-Campout™.
Since my barber is a rather self-sufficient kind of guy, he’s got deer antlers and pictures of himself with giant catfish all over the walls of his, uh, barber shack. Really cool guy, we had a great discussion about his pecan trees all over his lot when it was my turn.
Anyway, the discussion of the campouts reminded me of some of my out-of-country time. In the local rivers there, there were such things as fresh water eels. This could not have been more freaky for a city-boy like myself. The waters were typically crystal clear mountain snow run0ff, and while it was generally cold, the swimming was great, and the rivers full of huge boulders and rocks. BUT, around these rocks hid these freshwater eels. I’ve noted our local swimming “hole” with an asterisk. You can see more or less where my old house was (marked with the ever-present Google Maps Point “A” )
So when people are at the beach imagining sharks mere inches below them, the same was happening when we would swim in these icy clear swimming holes. Sometimes you would forget about them, but there would usually be dark overhangs of brush, and you sure as hell wasn’t going to swim in there! One time we went out on a school sponsored trip and some of the guys fished for eels and caught some. They caught the first one (I think the guy’s name was Chad if I remember) and laid him along the bank. Chad was contemplating his next catch and started tapping his foot. Right on the head of the eel. Chad was wearing the sandals that our boy’s school typically wore in the summertime. Nothing but a small flap of leather between his foot and this eel who was obviously not happy being out of the water. In a very typical lord-of-the-flies ritual, I recall them beating the eel in the head until it was dead. I also recall someone skinning it and cooking it, so I guess while it was a little barbaric, it wasn’t completely senseless violence.
Either way, those buggers are creeepy man, very creepy.
That almost dovetails the time my brother was nearly attacked by a sea-snake, but I’ll leave that for another time.