HOW SHREK LEARNED TO WEAR SHOES IN THE PASTURE
When I was about fourteen we had an old cast iron tub at one end of the stable we used as a water trough. I walked out in the pasture one fine early spring day and was going toward the stable when out from under that tub came the biggest toad frog I have ever seen coming right towards me at a rate of speed I never knew toad frogs could reach. (All my previous experiences with toad frogs were with the slow, surly kind that liked to pee on your hand and leave you checking for warts that your grandma said frog pee would inevitably give you.)
Now I, being a normal country boy, was only wearing a pair shorts in order to enjoy that fine spring sunshine. I didn't even have a pair of shoes on - at fourteen I was the normal lazy boy that wasn't gonna waste the effort to put shoes on if I didn't have to.
So there I was, barefooted, rooted to the ground with my mouth hanging open, a good ten yards or so from that tub, watching this huge toad frog come flying toward me and not even slowing down. Well, just about two or three yards before that frog got to me I saw something else moving. As I glanced back up at the that old tub I saw a sight that I will remember to my dying day - a big water moccasin raising up off the ground, like outta some dern movie and commence to start... well... snaking toward that frog, which meant of course, toward me. And I want you to know that as fast as that toad frog was, that snake was even faster.
It seamed that the universe itself just suddenly stopped and everything took on a surreal quality as those two critters raced toward my feet. I want you to know, every hair on my body was standing at attention, and if you'da ask me at that moment if I was a boy or a girl, I woulda told you "a boy", but I don't think I coulda dropped my britches and provided any proof.
Well, I'll have you to know that frog went right between my legs with that snake rapidly catching up. I will never forget the feeling of that snake, with its head held off the ground, as it slithered across my bare right foot. I turned at the waist(I was so rooted to the ground right then I don't think a Mac truck could've hit me and moved me off'n that spot) and watched as that moccasin caught up to that frog about ten feet on the other side of me.
I cringe when think about how that snake bit down on that frog right between his legs (further proof that I was a boy) when he caught up to him. That snake never laid his head on the ground, in fact, he raised it up a little higher as he turned around and headed.... wait for it.... right back toward me and the way he had come.
So here comes the snake with a mouth full of frog, frog arms and frog legs hanging outta each side of that snakes' mouth with the frogs head poking out the front, the snakes head in the air weaving back and forth headed toward that old tub. As he passed by me(about four inches from my big right toe this time), I could hear that snake slithering across the ground.
That snake made it about halfway back to that old tub before my screaming meemies kicked in and caused me to break loose from whatever spell the devil had cast over me. I strengthened my belief in superpowers that day as I began to move, not away from the snake, but towards it. The Flash himself could not have moved faster than I did and superman could not have flown any straighter, as I literally levitated over that snake to get to the stable wall where we had a bunch of tobacco sticks piled up.
I reached down and grabbed a tobacco stick and commenced to wailing on that snakes head just before he made it to that old tub. I whacked down the first couple'a times and drove him into the ground, but on that third swing I put a Babe Ruth on him that any big leaguer would've been proud of. He was just raising up off'n the ground as I made contact right under his head. I hit him so hard that it knocked the frog clean outta his mouth and he come off the ground and hit the side of the stable and fell right beside those tobacco sticks.
Needless to say, I decided to take out all my pent up fears on that snake right then. What was left when I finished could best be described as "moccasin mush". That poor old toad frog was stiff as a board when I picked him up(he still had a fang sticking out of his back that had broke off when I hit that snake).
So take my advice: when you walk out in the pasture always carry a tobacco stick and for heaven's sake put on some shoes...