{"id":158,"date":"2014-11-16T04:35:58","date_gmt":"2014-11-16T04:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/franchlife.com\/?p=158"},"modified":"2014-11-22T14:32:48","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T14:32:48","slug":"act-before-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/?p=158","title":{"rendered":"Act Before You Think"},"content":{"rendered":"

You might think I have it wrong\u2026it\u2019s \u201cThink<\/em> Before You Act<\/em>.\u201d \u00a0Not when it comes to snakes in Texas. \u00a0We live in the state that is home to 15 venomous snakes. \u00a0One of the rhymes we teach in kindergarten is, \u201cRed on yellow kills a fellow. Red next to black is a friend to Jack.\u201d \u00a0This helps you distinguish between a venomous coral snake and its harmless relatives. \u00a0Learn it before you come visit. \u00a0Well, I don\u2019t want my children standing in the path of a snake visiting our franch trying to remember how the rhyme goes\u2026and getting it wrong. \u00a0So, I instruct, if you see a snake, \u201cDon\u2019t think, run.\u201d \u00a0Correction: \u201cGet your little sister, and then run.\u201d \u00a0So far, fortunately, only my husband has had an encounter with a snake on our franch. \u00a0The story goes\u2026 \u00a0He had been sick all day and of little help with the franch chores. \u00a0The only chore left was to close up the chickens for the night and he was looking much better, so he offered to do this final task. \u00a0Where was he, I wondered, twenty minutes later? \u00a0I found him red-faced, with his shirt soaked in sweat, and completely out of breath. \u00a0Seeing him, I had chuckled at first, \u201cWhat could have possibly happened in a chicken coop?\u201d \u00a0A 5 ft long snake stretched out along the nesting boxes and up along the wall, that’s what! \u00a0 Eeeeeeek!!! \u00a0My husband instinctively grabbed the nearest shovel; he thrust it in the snake\u2019s direction yet missed\u00a0several times, it slithered here and there inside the coop, and then, after several harrowing minutes, he finally killed it. The next day, he and the children went out to identify its remains. \u00a0The older two children exclaimed, almost in unison, “Awww, dad, why’d you kill it? It’s not a bad one.” \u00a0Indeed, it\u00a0turned out to be a harmless<\/em> chicken snake. \u00a0It eats\u00a0chicken eggs, and we have plenty of ’em. \u00a0Perhaps,\u00a0my husband should\u00a0have first consulted\u00a0the Identification Guide of Texas Snakes in our kitchen drawer\u00a0before taking lethal action. \u00a0But, little\u00a0hands gather eggs every morning and every evening. \u00a0Sometimes, it’s okay to act before you think.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_3660\"<\/a>

We need to stop advertising fresh eggs on our chicken coop just in case snakes can read.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You might think I have it wrong\u2026it\u2019s \u201cThink Before You Act.\u201d \u00a0Not when it comes to snakes in Texas. \u00a0We live in the state that is home to 15 venomous snakes. \u00a0One of the rhymes we teach in kindergarten is, \u201cRed on yellow kills a fellow. Red next to black is a friend to Jack.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-not-on-a-franch","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions\/315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}