Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years.
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When I was about 10 or 11 years old, I had a friend named Bill Porter. I have mentioned him in several of these columns, because he had a special relationship with wild animals.
Every spring, his house was like a veterinary clinic. He would retrieve and raise baby birds that fell from their nest. Or he would find a young abandoned rabbit or squirrel and nurse it back to health as he fed it with an eyedropper.
Bill knew nearly everything about wild animals. I always thought of him as kind of a “St. Francis of Marysville.” And I thought that some day he would make a great zoo veterinarian.
On one hot summer day, Bill and I rode our bicycles north on Maple Street to the fairgrounds. He wanted to show me a couple baby pigeons in a nest near the top of the grandstand. Bill thought we could train the birds to be carrier pigeons so we could send messages to each other. However, when we got to the nest, we found that we were too late. Both of the little birds had already taken wing and left the nest.
We left the grandstand empty handed, and we sat on a small pile of old railroad ties, just across the cinder track, north of the grandstand. As we sat there and talked, I put my hand on the tie I was sitting on and I discovered a hole about the size of a softball. I looked into the hole, and I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was full of snakes! I mean, there were a lot of snakes, and they were all intertwined. Oh man, did that look creepy.
I pulled my hand back quickly, and Bill then looked into the hole. Boy did he become excited. He said it was a garter snake nest. I don’t think he would have been any happier if he had just won the lottery. That’s the way that kid felt about almost all wild animals.
He pulled one of the young snakes out of the nest and held it in his hand. He told me that garter snakes were really our friends because they ate insects. He said he was going to take a couple of them home and put them in his mother’s flower garden to help her get rid of damaging bugs. He suggested that I also take a snake or two home and do the same in my mother’s flowerbeds.
Oh boy, there was no way I was going to do that. First of all, you couldn’t pay me enough to put my hand into that creepy snake nest. And besides that … what do you think my mother’s reaction would be if I told her I had put a couple snakes in her flower bed?
I think she would have stopped gardening and found another hobby, maybe playing mah-jongg, or something like that. My mother really didn’t like snakes.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at bill@davidwboyd.com