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A Scary Story

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What a lovely and sometimes chilling assortment of creature stories we had yesterday. It is now clear that bats, deer, moose, raccoons and baboons are reaching out to us with their various appendages offered in friendship, but we always seem to screech and run the other way, or stab them with a pitchfork.

No wonder there’s no peace in the woods.

While I have no doubt that every story on yesterday’s blog is absolutely true and each tale unfolded exactly as described, one third person account did seem rather fantastic and urban-legendish. It came by way of a report from Namibia on baboon behavior, which segued into this …

“When we were in the South we had campfires every night and the sky was so clear and full of stars–making planetariums jealous, as usual. Anyway, conditions were perfect for scary story telling and the best one I heard was from our student Morgan. She loves reptiles and used to have a boa constrictor. It was big enough to get out of its cage and it was free to. Anyway, she noticed that it was sleeping next to her in bed at night, like how cats and dogs like to do that. But then she took it into the vet because she noticed that it wasn’t eating anything, and hadn’t been for a few days, so obviously she was concerned. The vet asked, “has it been doing anything else out of the ordinary lately?” and Morgan goes, “Well, he’s been sleeping next to me…” and the vet says, “We have to put it down immediately! Your snake is preparing to eat you!”

I found this tale fascinating. What was the snake doing? If you were a hungry animal, how could lying alongside your next meal help you? I couldn’t imagine what sort of biological need might propel such a strange behavior. So I decided to look into it more deeply. My painstaking research involved typing the phrase “snake is preparing to eat you” into the search box at Google, and it took me to this post at a question and answer board from three years ago.

I’ve heard this story twice in the last week from two different sources, typical friend-of-a-friend preamble. In the story a boy (or in the other version a girl) notices that their large pet snake hasn’t been eating its food. He calls the vet who tells him the snake is probably fine but to call back if he is still worried. The snake has the run of the house and usually sleeps curled up at the end of the owner’s bed. The owner notices that the snake is still not eating and has started to lie full length on the bed beside him at night. He calls the vet again who asks if there have been any changes in the snakes habits or sleeping pattern. The owner describes how the snake is sleeping stretched out and the vet replies, “you must bring in your snake immediately and have it destroyed. it was starving itself because it wanted to eat you, it lay beside to see if it was long enough to swallow you yet.”

Aha! Of course! The snake was measuring its potential victim! . I didn’t get that the first time I read it through. I assumed the tactic was psychological – the boa was probably sleeping beside its prey to put the prospective meal at ease. That’s how I reasoned it out. Smart! I guess I’d be easy prey for a meal-measuring boa constrictor, if boa constrictors did that.

I discovered after a few more minutes’ research that the whole crafty-snake-in-the-bed thing had been completely debunked at snopes.com. Too bad!

I felt superior for about ten minutes. An urban legend, exposed!

But like any slasher film or monster epic, there was one final realization that turned my smug satisfaction to horror. It hit me like a moist, rabid, soul-sucking bat flailing in panic against the side of my head. It was this:

What started out as an alarming story about a hungry snake had turned into a mortifying story about a fully grown adult who needed to use a website to confirm that a scary story told around a campfire on a starry night was, in fact, a fabrication.

The Internet had replaced my brain! Aiiiiiiiiiiiii!

Have we been completely swallowed by our computers?

72 thoughts on “A Scary Story”

  1. As a rabid fan of both TB and computers I was not worried about the snake story. I’m not sure if it was my fondnes for being swallowed by boa constrictors in song or the unlikeliness of planning by snakes.

    I was much more disturbed by the number of folks on this blog who were at risk for rabies exposure. I never used to worry about rabies, but now that I work in public health I hear all the stories about rabies and have begun to worry about it. The cure for my anxiety is to turn to the internet for the following fact sheet on rabies in Minnesota http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/idepc/diseases/rabies/rabies.html

    Be careful babooners-if the bats don’t get you, the computers might!

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  2. It seems that this loops very nicely back to the post to Dr. Babooner. Had they only run “Shirley Sharrod is a racist” through snopes before acting, so much trouble could have been saved.

    Of course, there is the issue of us all racing to a website (snopes, et al) to confirm or refute what we see on another website.

    What a world, what a world.

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    1. Yikes. I just ran this last post through Snopes. That site hinted that “madislandgirl” is not a real person and may not be an actual female. Me, I’m thinking this is one of the many faux-identities adopted by master of deception, Jim Ed Poole.

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      2. So . . . poor old Descartes has been reduced to “I golf, therefore I am”?

        Wow, by that test I am less real than you, for I’d put my bad golf game up against your worst any day! And now I’m afraid to put “Steve in Saint Paul” through Snopes. I might find out that I’m actually an alcoholic golf course attendant and Tea Party supporter living in New Jersey.

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      3. I was merely commenting on the superiority of Mr. Poole’s golf game(he actually plays for real) to my own(I like going for the walk and think keeping track of strokes detracts from the experience).

        It’s the main way to tell us apart. It is true that we have never been seen in the same room (we saw the Last Morning Show at Central Pres.)

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      4. One of the cute points of etiquette I sometimes encounter is whether to inform a friend that his or her forward is BS. It is always smart to check the veracity of internet messages that just seem a little too good to be true. But do you want your friends to know that you second-guess them this way? And is there any real use in telling them that their fascinating forward about how Roman chariots affect the size of today’s cars is ten percent fact and the rest romantic nonsense that is cleverly packaged?

        And then there are the Chicken Little friends who send panicky notes four or five times a year to inform you that some horrible virus is loose and is almost sure to gobble up my hard drive. There is one woman who never writes me except to tell me I have about a day of computing before my computer turns into an ugly door weight. Just chill, will you Nancy? Chill!

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      5. Steve, I know what you mean on the etiquette issue. I used to try to politely but firmly tell people their scary stories were “urban legends,” but now I mostly just keep it to myself. As a rule, though, I don’t believe anything I learn about in a forwarded email message, whether it is a warning about crime in mall parking lots or computer viruses.

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  3. Rise and Shine Babooners:

    I think we have been swallowed. I’m so computer dependent–at work for notes, financial records, and billing; at home for computer games and corresponding with friends and family. And of course there is Blevinses and TB, my new morning ritual . The ipod, that little computer extension, is often in my ear while walking or at the gym. I like to travel with a laptop to use as a travel guide and for directions.

    Many years ago when my son went off to college we had a 386 computer that would only work if he came home and was in the house. He would leave and the thing was without a spark.

    I have not yet awakened to the computer stretched out beside me in bed measuring my height. May be the computers just go for the brain. Like that parasite that attacks moose brains.

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  4. Mike, if you are going to pre-empt JASPER for the topic, you could do Loudon Waiwright’s “Last Man on Earth,” if I’ve go the name right. “I hate that letter E.” Assuming it did not paly while I was biking in.

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  5. Like Jacque, I can only conclude I have been swallowed and my feet are the only thing sticking out of the constrictor’s smiling face. I am owned by my computer. I use it for work, for music, for games, for news, for photo editing and (above all) for keeping in touch with friends that I mostly wouldn’t have any contact with if it weren’t for the computer.

    When I travel it is like I’m on a giant rubber band linking me to the computer. The farther I go and longer I stay, the more compelling the pressure becomes to rush back and boot up again.

    Somewhat OT: does anyone have a recommendation for a good Wi-Fi radio (I think that’s the name for a radio that would play streamed signals like RH)? My daughter wants to give her husband one.

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      1. My research was really confused at first by the two new technologies: “internet radio” (sometimes called WiFi) and “Hi D radio” (HD). People seem to use the names interchangeably.

        If I am right, internet radio must be used in a WiFi-enriched environment (like many of our homes). It picks up its signal from the WiFi router. The big advantage of this radio is that it will receive any station on the net offering streamed content.

        HiD radio is somewhat more limited, but has advantages. This is a table radio or tuner that operates like any AM/FM radio by receiving broadcast signals. But it gets a richer array of stations and gives higher quality output. Its limitation is that it handles only locally broadcast signals. So I could get RH radio on a Hi D radio but not the student station in Duluth, which I could get with a WiFi radio.

        That’s what I think I know. Correct me if you will, please!

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  6. Good Morning to All,

    I might become much more addicted to computer use if I had more computer skills and better computer equipment. As the song playing on RH says, I’m an old analog type and don’t fit well into the digital world, although I am trying and it is frustrating. Actually, my computer is probably good enough to do almost anything I want to do, but I don’t always know how to put it to work. I am almost completely self taught which means I know enough to be “dangerous”. By “blundering” around I manage to gradually increase my computer skills, but it is a very slow process.

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    1. I’m addicted by time because I have to work with them without adequate skills. I would consider, not really, not using them after retirement but I do not think my children would allow me to, and very soon the grandkids will expect to be able to use it when visiting.

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      1. Clyde, I am retired. I do have a lot of history of using computers, but somehow the more advanced uses of computers left me behind. I know enough to see the potential of some of these things, but don’t want to take time to develop the skills. Some day I will start making better use of my ipod, but I don’t know when. Then there is the mess I have created trying to deal with digital pictures.

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      2. jim try a few fun i pod apps. radio costs 99 cents and gives you not only rh but 1000 others as well.
        dream up an app and hit the search button. it will blow you away.
        look at the free apps and try them and if you don’t like them delete them.
        or not… i am advocating turning to the vidiot forum here and that is not what i intended.
        but i did hear if you have an i pad you can get the app that lets you point it at the stars and it will tell you what you are looking at and give you astronomy lessons. truly amazing and on and on and on

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  8. lately, what’s swallowed is my time, not by fun things like TB but this week, many hours trying to “update” my browser and keep my favorites in the nice, little file arrangement that i have assembled over the last two years. i updated, and yesterday the new one crashed about a kabillion times. i think it’s because Microsoft hotmail (my email) doesn’t like non-ms stuff. but what do i know? nothing. so i’m using Mozilla, what Steve used until a couple months ago but moved on to chrome or something. what do these things have to update so often?? i don’t update that often – i personally downdate, moving toward less organization, less elegance and more keystrokes and forgetting. why can’t my software slow down for me? i feel your pain, Dale.

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      1. I wouldn’t trust any software that admits it doesn’t trust Dale.

        I don’t remember mentioning my browser before, but I have just switched to Google’s Chrome from Mozilla Firefox. Oh, what a difference! If speed means anything to you, Firefox is a turtle and Chrome is a gazelle.

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  9. EwwwwMike:

    This black snake song is CREEEEPY.

    This morning my husband and I were standing in the kitchen and suddenly our HD radio just turned on to RH–I had not gotten over there yet to push the button. Figure that one out.

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  11. I was going to go home yesterday and put this up, but then we had a near major tragedy in the mid afternoon, not in our immediate family but in the circle of family and in our daughter’s churches. We had to rush west to babysit so our daughter and husband could rush to the Cities following a medi-flight. Then wonderfully they ended up bringing the man home at 1 this morning. What looked terrible was not so bad. Anyway, I thought I would not post it, but then Dale went back to yesterday’s topic. So I will too.

    I believe most if not all people have a story to tell, whether it is a story which is insightful for its typicalness or for its atypicalness. I love reading such stories, such as Steve’s story of his parents. My story would fall much more into the atypical category for two reasons. 1) I was raised by parents who believed in the self-sustaining life out of simple stubborn German pragmatism. My mother would fully understand the concept of low-carbon footprint, but first because it was a cheaper and healthier life and then second because it is right to minimize your impact in all ways. 2) I grew up a child of nature, but not in the Pearl Prynne/Dimsdale sense of the term. The woods, being 30 yards from our house in two directions, was my third parent.

    So for 30 years I have been trying to fictionalize my story. Yesterday I said that I had many stories to tell of dramatic and or important encounters with wildlife. So I thought I would offer a few sections of the “novel” which relate some of these encounters. The parts I pulled amount 11 pages of text.

    If you want to be sent a Word file of those 12 pages, email me at cbirkholz@tensigma.org
    I warn you that two of the encounters are, shall we say, starkly harsh, but then so is nature every now and then. One you may think of as an encounter with nature. It’s all in the eye of the author. From one point of view the whole story is an encounter with nature, sometimes the nature that lives inside all of us.

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  12. Like Jacque, I, too, am overly dependent on computers at work, where I am tethered there typing most, if not all, of my reports, case notes, treatment plans, etc., in a State-wide comprehensive software program that somehow promises to link our documents with billing and insurance companies to ensure a seamless and problem free system of care. Yeah, right! We all cringe when we get e-mails announcing updates or “patches” because it invariably means that the system will produce new, unimaginable glitches never before encountered. At home, we rely on the computer for news and weather since we have no TV. It came in handy last night during a ferocious thunderstorm, since it was unclear if the sirens indicated a real tornado or if it just meant that the siren had been hit with lightning (again). I would not have the great conversations, recipes, and music that I have were it not for the computer. I am conflicted.

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  13. i have these thoughts about technology that i am sure will all be available 50 years form now. i see a pair of glasses that are like a movie screen where the movie plays on the inside of the glasses so you have the widescreen high definition screen on the end of your nose. eventually it will become contact lenses then implants. the computer will be installed like a pacemaker and you just ask the reference question or call up a game of solitaire or the wii exercise program and there it will be right in front of you. the thought forst hit me wishing i could read the paper riding down the raod in the car. did you ever notice how the reflection of the stuff on the dashboard is perfectly legible on the windshield in reverse? so if you print the paper backwards and then put it on the ipad and project it on the windshield you could have a clicker to turn the page and read the paper while looking out the windshield. it would be marketed only for the passenger but the driver would sneak it out and catch up on the twins scores on the way to work. e books on the trip to chicago?
    life without computers has become unthinkable. i don’t need a gps its on my phone. texting keeps me in contact with the social network. i texted the pitchers folks from the ball game last night to let them know their son was doing great and we were winning. they were elated. i ordered pizza at the ballpark by googling pizza cohasset mn and came up with a place 2 miles from the ball field that delivered. and then there is the trial baboon start to the day. my family start their day with the the today show or idiot cartoons depending on their likes. i start with you guys and get my fix from the start. i used to do a cigerette first for 35 years now i do tb and it feels similar. the world is not right without this tb family. i can see the day when you don’t need the computer you just call up the program from the implant. it all started with those little transistor radios for people who wanted to take their music with them and look where we are today.

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    1. Tim, lets hope the future you see is a possibility. However, our advanced computer systems don’t seem to have alerted enough of us to what is really happening in the world and I’m afraid the future will not be as good as any of us would like if we don’t start doing more about many serious problems we are facing.

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      1. jim i think the serious problems have always been there but the knowledge of them was limited to the chosen few. the advent of ted turners 24/7 news developed into politico and the watchdog blogs and websights that are changing the world in a way bigger than anything we have ever seen. you could kill yourself trying to right all the wrongs before the computer gets shut off but as we shall see the power of access is going to be huge. nothing bigger ever. it is amazing how everything changes when you have the world reference library in your pocket

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    2. But I like how you kept the family involved and ordered the pizza… there certainly are helpful things about this computer age that isn’t just fluff… Rock On Tim!

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    3. Tim You are thoughtful, as always. But you seem ready to rush into a new world in which technology penetrates even deeper into our awareness. That image of the car and reading a newspaper spooks me. Let’s first design a car that avoids accidents and requires less driver control. I’ve recently concluded that all this talk of “multitasking” is bogus. We can only attend to a single thing at a time. And if it isn’t driving, we should not be operating a car.

      And we might need more social controls to make it more possible and more acceptable to withdraw from a media-laced world and just live with our brains for an hour or two. We seem to have gone from the thrill of being connected to the outside world no matter where we are to the less pleasant sense that we HAVE to be connected.

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  15. i feel bad for the kids. people used to sit in a room or on a bus stop seat and the logical thing to do was to have a conversation with the person next to you. today everyone absolutely everyone is doing something on their phone ipad etc. the art of letting your mind wander is going to become lost art. if you are not absorbed in something that sucks your brain away from thought mode, the vidiot computer age will take care of that. reading a paper in the computer because it leads you to 12 other references that want to appeal to your interests while you are trying to turn to page two. it is an unbelievable tool but it is a cancer that keeps your brain on a trial instead of blazing new trails. thanks dale for pointing out the doom of the onslaught that is unstoppable.

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    1. Yes tim; people see it as such a revolutionary idea now to actually turn OFF the iPod or phone and sit and listen…

      Moderation in all things people.

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  16. My work is almost completely done on the computer. I work with AutoCAD and SolidWorks, both of which require a computer, haha. Most nights when I get home, I don’t even want to look at my computer, because I’ve been on one for 8-9 hours. I’m not home much, however, so I don’t have to try too hard to stay off my computer. I do find myself bringing it with me when I leave for the weekend, but I hardly ever use it. I have to bring it though, just in case. Ugh.

    I do like being able to talk with people I normally wouldn’t, though 🙂

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      1. i thought of you the other day i was driving down the road somewhere and saw a big sign outside a restraunt “we serve pasties”

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      2. Haha, that’s great 🙂 I was planning on having a pasty for dinner tonight, now that the weather is a little cooler.

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  17. Hi kids,
    It rained most of yesterday and last night around midnight we got a gusher of 4-6 in., depending which part of town you live in. I slept right through the storm (like a bourbon soaked log) and did not realize until this morning that the sump pump wasn’t functioning and my basement was filling and now I’m in quite the pickle. And I’m here on the blog because it has swallowed me whole, when I know I should be downstairs getting crap out of there. And that’s exactly where I’m headed now. Sump pump’s running again and shop vac is at the ready. Wish me luck!

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    2. i dealt with a flooded basement a month or two ago and i am not unsympathetic to your plight. life is always interesting, especially for bourbon soaked logs.

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    5. We flooded ourselves once when we failed to ensure that a downspout was connected corectly and a deluge came through a crack in the foundation. Boy, did I feel dumb!

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  18. Yep, we’ve all been swallowed by our computers… and we jumped right into them to the point that now they’re being put into everything. I think we asked for this.
    Farmer friend of mine; senior citizen, needs a new cell phone. For his kids and co-workers the biggest concern is having to teach him how a new phone works. My mother recently joined Facebook. Good for her but it’s what you would expect, “Is this thing on? Hello? Who is reading this?” My Dad has never used a computer and doesn’t intend on trying but Mom jumped right into the abyss…

    Yesterday I commented on Stan from Wild Kingdom. A little Google research on him turned up a very interesting story. He started a program called RAM; Remote Area Medical (“http://www.ramusa.org/index.html”) and this newspaper story by the Sunday Times from April 2009: (http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/ariel_leve/article6015125.ece) or (http://tinyurl.com/cclqvb)

    Stan Brock… quite the man and quite the story… one of those worms that has gotten into my head and I spent a good part of last night being fascinated by him…

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    1. ben you are something. stan got to you huh? what a find. he was a bit player in wild kingdom and now he is a volunteer world helper that makes a huge difference. how interesting. thanks for posting it. there is a bit more to stan than we saw in the clips. i don’t think i could do it on oatmeal and a straw mat but the world is a better place because of guys like stan.

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  19. Yep, good luck, Donna!

    We’ve been so proud of ourselves for not having a TV since the HD came in what, a year and a half ago. But I realized the other day: Husband watches an hour or two of sports/news on the computer every night, I’m on here and emailing a couple of hours a day… What’s the difference?

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  20. The tangy, sappy smell of the needles was sharper in the hard cold air.
    By the time he reached the lower fence, his sloppy pant legs would be wet and clammy, clinging to his shins.

    the pictures are exceptional. the voice is so inviting. i am stoppin on page 5 but will be back for the rest soon. keep on remembering and transposing it. wonderful wonderful stuff. my dad used to tell us his stories of childhood and i wish i had gotten him to jot them down. you have the ability to spin the tale into a picture with the details of taste smell and heatbeats included. congrats. you write real good.

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  21. I will admit to being tethered to my computer, and from time-to-time feeling swallowed by it whole…

    I was reminded this week, though, of the good computers can do. There was a program at my high school for orthopedically handicapped students and several of those kids had the precursors to laptop computers (this was the 80s when the Apple IIe was high tech stuff). Made all the difference in the world to my pals in that program – especially one friend who was a really good writer 9we were in a play writing group together), but wasn’t able to hold a pen or pencil easily. Having that very useful tool with him meant that he could type notes, stories, etc. without having an aid with him. Independence provided by strings of 1s and 0s.

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  23. I work in front of a computer all day, every day and couldn’t do my job without it. I enjoy having information at my fingertips and would not want to go back. I enjoy using the computer (when it’s working properly) but I also enjoy NOT using the computer. I don’t think it has quite swallowed me completely – maybe only half!

    I don’t use a cell phone very often. I only have a Trac phone. I don’t use I-pod for music either – I don’t have one. I’ve never been the Walkman type. I frequently hike in the woods and I really want to hear what’s going on around me. When you are quiet in the woods you can hear many things that you would miss if you had ear buds stuffed in your ears.

    I love music. It is my first choice art form. It’s such a pure expression of human emotion in a way that words can’t convey. I’ve always preferred ambient music. I might just grab my guitar and play along! I always sing along. That’s the reason I grieved so much when the Morning Show went away. We don’t have HD out here and I only had dial-up so I couldn’t get the music at all for awhile. I have high speed internet now and listen more frequently. My favorite thing in the world to do is to jam with friends around a campfire. Computers and I-pods are no help whatsoever there (unless you forget the lyrics).

    Speaking of music, it’s time for me to start plugging for something very near and dear to my heart – and maybe to some of yours too. I know that Mike at least is interested… Please consider putting Rock Bend Folk Festival in St. Peter on your calendar for the weekend of Sept. 11-12. Rock Bend is FREE and always wonderful. It’s a family friendly festival. Bring your lawn chairs, a cooler and a blanket and come and join us. The music is great, the atmosphere is fun, peaceful and positive. Check us out at http://www.rockbend.org. Thanks for indulging me with this plug but I really think some of you would enjoy it if you haven’t already…

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    1. Used to go, back when I could go to such things, and too endorse it. Hoping to move to St. Peter this fall or winter.

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      2. Big life changes coming our way, trying to manage them intentionally and intelligently, unlike the first 45 years of our marriage, wonderful years, but not all that well planned out.

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    2. Krista – thanks for this post, for the RockBend information, and also because (except for your 1st sentence) you and I are twins on the technology thing. I’ve never been able to listen to anything but the outdoors when I’m outdoors. Have a Trac phone that I’ve never programmed to receive messages, have considered an iPod but only for 5 minutes, and wish I had more friends to jam with around the firepit. Maybe we could meet up at RockBend…

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  24. Renee and Jacque–don’t know who your clients are, but our near tragedy yesterday was a person who was violently attacked by one of his paitents. It looked very bad but then on the flight they realized it wasn’t. Take care of yourselves.

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    1. Thank you for your concern , Clyde. We have pretty good institutional and peer systems for keeping ourselves safe. It helps working in a smaller community in which people know one another and see and hear things and let you know what’s happening.

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      1. THanks for your concern. My clients are a pretty tame bunch and I rarely am alone in the offices. However, back in my child protection days I often felt the situations were unsafe and we had little back up.

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