I’m still alive but just barely. The experts tell me the loss of blood was significant and the blister factor, combined with the poisons, should have collectively quite possibly ended these columns. These last two “jumps” have come closer to doin’ me in than: 412 fugitive recovery operations, three significant motorcycle malfunctions, one firearm-related incident by an outraged ex-wife, and a bloody incident involving a runaway outboard motor combined with a trotline.

Well, you get the idea.

It’s been a rough ride for a long time, but these last two weeks have been the “cake-taker.”

All of the above-mentioned carnage, combined with several aircraft-associated misadventures, chicken pox and mumps, and an angry relative with a belt — I could go on forever — an irritated stallion who one day decided not to be ridden by me or anybody else (if he’d had horns like a bull it would have saved me years of misery and a gallon of ink).

This is not a

suicide note, but it’s starting to feel like one. Barbed wire-related incidents and gun/boat disasters, not to mention wore-out farm equipment and redneck accidents in honky tonks.

I managed to survive all of that with only a borderline accompaniment of misery, that is until last week. It didn’t start on a battlefield or the murderous highway or even in a dark alley.

Naw, it started in my bedroom closet. And a dead-set, perfectly laid out ambush it was. The infamous brown recluse spider took a swipe at me and made a pretty good connection, too! The medical/sawbones jury is still out on the leg issue. I may not get to keep it. Well, I haven’t used it much in years anyway and used it half the time to start with.

That varmint was just

the start of it. Give me a good old honest moccasin bite any day over a spider. When that old stump-tailed cottonmouth lays ahold of you, at least you know you’ve been bit and will seek relief as soon as you’ve skinned it. (Be sure to reload your pistol after the moccasin episode because they are prolific breeders and are likely to have similarly ambitious relatives in the neighborhood.)

When that sneaky old spider nails you, you won’t even notice the ambush until your leg falls off. By that time, in my case, I was still feeling healthy enough to move my camper a little further down Moccasin Bend so I could get finned through the only hand that still works by a mildly irritated catfish. It was fortunate that I was fishing upstream from the landing because a man without hands ain’t very handy with a paddle.

That happened the first week. It turned out to be the easy part. The wreckage was just about to get cranked up. The afore-mentioned blood loss was accomplished by a heard of seed ticks who promptly moved in, dug in and made themselves at home. They weren’t as greedy as their Transylvanian relatives. They left me almost a pint and I was grateful (except for the fever).

I’ve managed to hang on for awhile. Hell, I’ve been here awhile and even voted for Jimmy Carter once. After a half-century of backwoods hobbies, I discovered yesterday that I’m no longer immune to poison ivy. My pass has been rescinded on that point. As a general rule I would have a few more points to elaborate on, but today I’m going to have to beg off. I gotta go scratch.

Still itchin’,

Ricky Harpole