Spending as much time outdoors as I have is bound to present some unusual encounters. Nature has many wonders and they always fascinated me. While growing up and most of my life I have had many books to identify plants and animals in the wild. Now I have apps on my phone to do it.
On a church group camping trip when I was about eight years old, two events stand out in my mind. We camped at an old mill pond and could not wait for the weekend of fishing, swimming, cooking on fires and trying to stay awake all night.
The first afternoon I went off by myself, fishing along the small branch below the dam. I noticed something in the shallows and when I got close, I got nervous, I had never seen anything like it. It looked like a big, thick 16-inch-long mottled brow slimy looking lizard with a red frill around its neck. For a minute I was afraid it was a baby “Godzilla,” growing like the one I had seen in the original movie grow from a leg that was blown off the adult.
Being a kid, I killed it with a stick and took it back to camp. Nobody had ever seen anything like it. When I got home I looked it up and found that it was an “Eastern Hellbender” salamander, the biggest salamander in the US. North Georgia is the extreme southern end of its range so to find on in middle Georgia was very unusual.
Ironically enough, in the early 1970s my favorite lure was a Hellbender, an early crankbait. Linda caught an eight-pound bass at Clarks Hill trolling one in 1971. The lure looked nothing like the real thing, though.
Back at the camp on the mill pond, someone killed a big fat water snake. That night around the fire I got out my trusty pocketknife and split it open. It has 17 eggs in it, mama was developing more water snakes. Someone threw it on the fire against the advice of the adults with us and we all learned how terrible burning snake smells.
Freshwater mussels always interested me. Their shells litter the banks in most of our lakes. Birds and otters will eat them. I have found piles of them under boat docks on a float where an otter went to dinner regularly.
I love all kinds of seafood including oysters, clams and mussels, so I just had to try a freshwater mussel. I found a live one at Clarks Hill that was as big as my fist, so I took it up to the kitchens and steamed it in the oven.
I might as well have scooped up a handful of the mud it was in and put it in my mouth. That’s what it tasted like!
I have never been shy about trying different kinds of food and have always said “I will eat anything that doesn’t eat me first.” That has produced some interesting experiences traveling with Linda all over the world.
While on a nature hike in the Amazon Rain Forest in Brazil with a survival training Captain in the Brazil Army, he showed us many typed of food provided by nature.
He showed us how to tease a tarantula spider out of its hole, saying they tasted good roasted and the fire burned oft the hairs that would tickle your mouth. He then cut a vine up high then cut the bottom, grabbing it quickly. It was full of water, several of us had a swallow of the pure water in the jungle before it all ran out.
He also cut a palm branch with a small nut looking growth on it and said it was a palm nut, similar to a coconut. He told us the meat of the nut was good food but inside was often a source of protein, a palm nut grub. When he split the nut, sure enough there was a grub inside. It reminded me of the grub worms we dig up here.
He asked if anyone would eat it. After a few seconds of quiet, I said I would. When I put in in my mouth and bit down, it popped. It did taste like coconut!
About half of us on that cruise ship flew back to Miami from Manus, Brazil on a chartered 777. When Linda and I were bordered first and put in the two first class front seats, others looked at us and asked how we got those seats.
I told them it was because I had eaten the grub!