<\/p>\n
Out here in the desert,
\nEverybody bites, pinches, or stings.<\/p>\n
When my hound learned rattlesnakes were bad
\n(I was grateful for the fence between them)
\nMy neighbor taught me to
\nPin its head and neck with something heavy
\nDecapitate it with a shovel (don\u2019t touch it because it can still
\nBite) and drop it in the septic access pipe.<\/p>\n
The hound was so proud of himself he
\nBayed at the garden hose for half an hour.<\/p>\n
I use a snake stick now if they\u2019re too close to the house, and
\nRelease those rattlers in their range.
\nI was a girl with a
\nToad in a jar or a jar full of flies for my
\nLizards, or a wild snake in my grubby hands
\nGently returning him home after a some probably
\nTerrifying gigantic admiration.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve got scorpions, sun spiders, Gila monsters, coral snakes,
\nFire ants, kissing bugs, raccoons, coyote, and
\nCougar (she was using the treehouse as a
\nFeeding perch and it took a pitched pile of rocks before she picked a better
\nRestaurant).<\/p>\n
An honored guest
\nTarantula lives in my basement and eats
\nCockroaches.<\/p>\n
So a black widow in the door jamb
\nNear the carport
\nReally didn\u2019t bother at all. I said
\nHi to her as I came and went to work.<\/p>\n
But the mutual non-aggression policy
\nFailed when I saw that sack of eggs.<\/p>\n
Bleach in a bottle was in easy reach, so I
\nSquirted it on the cocoon of her lives.<\/p>\n
I figured, I figured…
\nIt doesn\u2019t matter what I figured because
\nBlack Widow Mother sprinted to her eggs. She
\nLeapt back as she approached the stink. She knew it was
\nPoison; she walked a jittery circle away and back twice.<\/p>\n
I figured, I figured…
\nIt doesn\u2019t matter what I figured because her
\nFrantic legs straddled drops of death clinging to her guy wires and she
\nPlucked up that sodden silk purse of destroyed hope;
\nAway she went, wobbling, slowing, absorbing toxic extermination
\nSo she could save her babies.
\nAghast, I watched her die, her body in death still
\nClutching the corpse cocoon.<\/p>\n
I figured, I figured…
\nIt doesn\u2019t matter what I figured because
\nI was wrong.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Out here in the desert, Everybody bites, pinches, or stings. When my hound learned rattlesnakes were bad (I was grateful for the fence between them) My neighbor taught me to Pin its head and neck with something heavy Decapitate it with a shovel (don\u2019t…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":967,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,441],"tags":[2412,2316,2318,326,511,15,10,2116,2398,2317],"class_list":["post-36905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-poetry-prompt-responses","tag-black-widow","tag-laurel","tag-laurel-wilson","tag-marathon","tag-mother","tag-poem","tag-poetry","tag-poetrymarathon2017","tag-spider","tag-wilson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/967"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36924,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36905\/revisions\/36924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}