Gary Reeder
WB (Scott Boggs) with his tale of daring do
Wednesday, October 05, 2022, 13:22

reminded me of another situation of trying to shoot something in a boat while out on the water.

Years ago I was in a group of guys that did some strange things on the weekend. One of those things was using several canoes on a river outside Nashville. We would take enough food for a day and plan to stay out for 3 or 4 days living on what we could kill and/or catch.

One of the friends on one of these excursions (that we will call Joe) was deathly afraid of snakes. Prior to this little get together I had bought one of the rubber snakes that was so real it would fool anyone. You could lay it down on a flat surface and it would start wiggling.
I brought this little creature with me on one of these little trips. This friend who didn't like snakes nor even the word "SNAKE when yelled out loud was in one of the canoes. I had my little fake snake with me in the front of my canoe and kept telling my friend Joe that I was seeing snakes everywhere. After about an hour of this I had him on the verge of a small heart attack. Easing my canoe up beside his out in the middle of the river on the excuse of us pulling over to the bank for lunch. As we got near his canoe I held the snake in my hand, and reached over into the water, splashing it around and yelling "Joe I just caught one of those damn snakes". I then pitched over into the bow of my friend's canoe. By now our friendship was beginning to deteriorate quickly. At the sudden arrival of my snake into his canoe things began to happen quite rapidly. The first thing was my friend pulled his 1911 and began doing his best to kill my snake. After the 3rd or 4th round I managed to convince him the snake was not real and at the same time noticing that water was coming into his canoe. I also remembered that my friend had at least 3 or 4 rounds still in his 1911 and in his current state of mind, at least 3 of those might have been aimed at me. Convincing him that the state of the canoe was more important than putting a few rounds of 45 ACP into his friend who was rapidly becoming an ex friend. After calming him down and not getting shot in the same instance we got him to canoe to the bank maybe 40 or 45 yards away.
We got him and the somewhat water soaked canoe to the bank and pulled all his gear out onto the sand. I tried to apologize to my now ex friend who for some odd reason wasn't talking to me. There were some willow trees all along the bank and I cut several down and using some of the pieces of wood pounding into the aluminum I plugged the holes. I offered to switch canoes with my now ex friend who wasn't talking to me other than a few 12 and 14 letter words that were mumbled in my direction. Being this was the last day of our little excursion the 45 caliber holes weren't a real problem. I paid to have the holes professionally repaired and the canoe was as good as new but he never went on another river trip with us. Kase was with me on this trip and while we were unloading the canoe I picked up the snake out of the bow of the canoe and I quietly mumbled for him to cover the snake with sand or brush. I asked him later what did he do with the snake. He said he covered it with sand but left the head sticking out a bit, just enough to give someone else a rude awakening.