Fallen Heroes



Pensacola Journal Editorial Page, June 23, 2011

  It has been a solemn week, since the news headlined that two men, fighting wildfire in Hamilton County lost their lives.  They went to school in the area and I have discovered just how small our community is.  Two people I have never met died and their deaths touched lives around me.  The two firefighters were part and parcel of the life of our town.  Someone Elder Daughter knows went to school with Josh Burch and attended his funeral today.  She also learned that her mother attended school with Brett Fulton.  His funeral will be held on Saturday. 

Elder Daughter called me about 5:00PM today, asking if I could watch the grandsons while she and her husband took this  friend out to dinner.  When I learned that she had just come from attending the funeral today - and was in need of some quiet fellowship,  I said of course I would watch the boys.  Elder daughter described some of the funeral to me from her friend's remembrances - there was a flag folded and presented to a mother with smaller flags given to the surviving sons.  There was a fly-over of the Ranger helicopters at the cemetery.  The dispatcher called the Final Roll Call - asking for the firefighter to respond to the radio.  After the last request to respond, the dispatcher announced that the fallen hero had not answered the call and was Out of Service for the last time.  Oh, my!   Elder daughter and I had tears in our eyes and quavering voices at the end of the conversation.  

This loss is felt deeply in a such a small community.  Keep the families and friends of the two men in your prayers.  They stood between the community and the danger of wildfire and lost their lives doing something they loved.  When I think that the one man got out of the area, realized that his friend wasn't there and went back in - the words come to mind, "no greater love..."


 

It was a Red Touch Yellow Snake!!!!

The date was June 16th, 2011.  The Lieutenant had just walked past my cubicle on the rug between my opening and the one just across the way.  He passed beyond the cubicle opening and was heading towards his office door when he turned back to say something to me.  Instead, I heard him say, "Is that a snake?  Who put that there?  Is it a rubber snake?" 

I turned in my chair and looked back to see this colorful snake stretched out along the rug, just beside the wall of the cubicle across from me.  Maybe ten feet away.  About the time I turned and Lt. was taking a step towards the thing on the rug, it moved!  I picked my feet up and Lt. took a step backwards.

Things got a little frantic.  The office became a hive of activity with two of the guys headed for higher ground and two more heading towards the little visitor on the rug.  One of the guys plopped a trash bin upside down atop the slithering serpent as it tried to round the corner and take shelter under our briefing table. 

Oh, no!  The snake managed to escape the Rubbermaid receptacle.  Using the edge of the can to sweep the colorful thing backwards from the table, he managed to push it towards the cubicle wall near the opening.  Oh, that's good, but it wouldn't be trapped.  Another of the guys rushed up and together they stomped the snake against the rug and the cubicle wall.  Finally they managed to get their shoes on the body of the snake pinning it down and the one man leaned down, whipping out his knife and opening the blade up.  Slice.  He cut  the head off.

The body was tipped into a bag and the guys thought the head was there as well.  It wasn't. 

After a search in all areas the guys had moved around with this snake-in-a-bag, the head was located on the floor in the very area where it had been cut from the body.  The guy who decapitated the snake kept saying that this variety didn't have fangs and couldn't strike at anyone.  He said it needed to get hold of soft tissue and chew on it, in order to kill prey.  That wasn't much comfort to know.    I think I blurted out that I didn't really need the snake's resume - just please, please PLEASE find that head!
Thank goodness, I work with brave men and women.  The guys surely know how to take care of snakes and the lady with her camera was able to document the actions of some of the non-snake handling men.




Coral Snake - held by the snake killer and hero of the morning

 



 

Shaken but not stirred....

In Walmart on Saturday I was headed towards the main aisle when I spotted a female who apparently was one of those few  people who are born with little or no jawbone.  She seemed to have absolutely no chin, with the line of her neck running from her collarbone to approximately an inch below her nose.  She was pushing a basket and was walking perpendicularly across my path.  I was just about to think to myself, "Aw, the poor thing." when she suddenly clapped her lower lip upwards to her top lip and her chin slid upwards into its normal place on her face.  I realized that  what I had mistakenly thought was the silhouette of  a chinless person was actually that of a person in the middle of a gawping yawn.  Then I espied the rest of her.  A pink sleep tee and stripped flannel jammy bottoms.  This lady was wandering the aisles of the store in a sleep deprived state, wearing her pajamas and a pair of flip-flops.  There was nothing in her basket.  She was headed towards the dairy section, so one can only hope she was picking up some milk for her cereal.  Creamer for her coffee.  Something to start the day right, something to wake her up and shake her up and yell in her face, "What were you thinking, going out shopping in sleepwear.....!"

Maybe it would have done some good.  Or, not.