Lawnmowing Session of Epic Oddness; When Water Intake Takes Deadly Turn

By Jay Mann | on August 16, 2023

MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN: Fun fact – purple martins will nest only in houses like this one. However, the challenge lies in having to evict other birds from the dwelling to make room.(Photo by Ryan Morrill)

Commencing this week’s column with a human-vs.-wildlife tale of barely believable proportions. It’s stunningly true, though.

Silsbee is a small Texas town, a distant suburb of Houston. It is quiet and generally quite safe – short of the occasional arm-grabbing, face-biting, flying snake and hawk attack. Say what!?

Hey, just ask longtime Silsbee resident Peggy Jones. Last week, while out rider-mowing her expansive five-acre lawn, she was rained down upon by a 4-foot, thoroughly enraged “flying snake,” in Peggy’s words.

The smack-down snake instantly wrapped around her arm and constricted like there was no tomorrow, which there wasn’t for the creature.

Mind immediately blown, Peggy could barely process the acquisition of a reptilian arm ornament before the snake began taking pot-shot bites at her face. She adroitly dodged the attacks by drawing back her head while holding the biter as far out as possible. Ironically, only a couple years earlier, Peggy had taken a bite from a rattlesnake, albeit in a more traditional fang-to-leg fashion.

While the tale of a sky snake crashlanding on a Texan would merit a worthy mention in my book of bewilderingly weird, the weirdness had just commenced. The sky was ready to dish more disaster onto Mrs. Jones.

No sooner had the snake unleashed its facial assaults than doesn’t this huge hawk come divebombing onto the mower-top fray. It was in full-impact assault mode. Its fierce talons gouged Peggy’s be-snaked arm, tearing ER-grade gashes into the flesh.

As snake teeth flew freely and flapping hawk wings flailed, the put-upon woman was too staggered to call out for help from her husband, working inside the couple’s large house.

As you might have surmised, the life-and-death battle twixt snake and hawk stemmed from the raptor having dropped its snake prey while transporting it back to hungry nestlings. That understood, there’s no earthly computing the odds of a hawk-dropped snake landing perfectly on the arm of a mower-riding human … with the entire state of Texas an option down below!

After a minute of utter predator/prey madness, the hawk gained the upper claw, subduing its meal-to-be. Victorious, it settled for a second or two on Peggy’s arm, before rather nonchalantly taking flight, delivering a couple departing wing slaps to its host’s head. Left in its wake was an arm horrifically worse for wear, collaterally damaged.

With all skyfall gone, Peggy yelled for her husband. He came running to her aid, stopping in his tracks, stunned by the sight of his spouse’s arm. As big a stunner was her uncalmly telling of what had happened.

I can only imagine the husband’s thought process upon hearing about the Great Texas Arm-grabbing, Face-biting, Flying Snake and Hawk Attack. They name things very quickly in those parts.

Arm towel-wrapped, the couple rushed to the hospital. The damage took some serious fixin’ by the ER staff. Treatment was slowed by doctors and nurses stopping, mid-bandaging, to absorb the saga behind the wounds.

Along with infection fears, the medical staff also had concerns that their patient might have been envenomated by the snake, though no immediate signs of any toxic bites were found.

No-toxin makes sense. All herpetological signs point to the snake being a nonvenomous rat snake, which has immense constriction power. It is also just about the orneriest critter on the block, explaining all the biting going-on.

It didn’t take long for the media to latch onto the story.

CBS News: “Texas woman says a snake fell out of the sky and onto her arm – then, a hawk swooped in and attacked.”

NBC News: “Snake falls from sky onto Southeast Texas woman before hawk attacks them both.”

Local media: “Texas woman simultaneously attacked by snake, hawk after snake ‘fell from the sky.’”

Imagine at church that week. “So, Peggy, how was all y’all’s week?”

HORRORS OF H2O: I was totally stunned to recently hear about something called water intoxication, though thinking back, I might have come all too close to succumbing to the potentially deadly condition.

Last week, an Indiana mom died after downing a copious amount of water to stave off dehydration. Inadvertently, she overdid her body’s ability to take in fluids.

According to a new report, “She apparently overwhelmed her body by drinking too much water. It was a hot summer afternoon. … She grabbed several bottles of water and chugged them down – approximately 64 ounces in 20 minutes.” She quickly became ill and was transported to the hospital, where she succumbed to hyponatremia, the medical term for water intoxication.

The spooky part about this little-known condition is how it can occur after consuming just one liter of water, approximately 35 ounces, in under an hour. It’s the speed of the intake that can spell doom.

Pondering point: One of those larger one-liter bottles of water seems easy to down in under an hour. By the same measure, the standard single-use plastic water bottle holds 16.9 ounces of fluid. Power guzzling just two of those could mean big trouble.

Per the Mayo Clinic, “When you drink too much water, your kidneys can’t get rid of the excess water. The sodium content of your blood becomes diluted.”

Water intoxication also screws up the body’s critical electrolyte balance, resulting in a rapid decrease in serum sodium concentration and possible death.

A NEAR-DEATH BOUT WITH INTOXICATION: Many years back, my buddy Sean and I were playing in a torrid two-man beach volleyball tourney up in Seaside Heights. How torrid? The air was 90-something, the sand checked in at 115 degrees, and the sun was slinging SPF-50 daggers.

Despite the day’s sizzleness, we were kicking it, going undefeated through a slew of primary events due to Sean’s superior volleyball skills and my defensive hustle. Then the heat crushed me. Despite steadily sipping fluids, I became hyper dehydrated, made critical by my running out of water.

I went on a water-seeking mission, staggering off the beach looking like that Hollywood visage of a sun-fried guy, stumbling across the midday desert, mumbling, “Water, water …”

I managed to reach a near-beach convenience store where I gathered up three liter-sized bottles of icy cold Evian water, along with a small 16-ouncer that I drank on the spot, while allowing the luscious coolness from the open refrigeration unit door to spill onto me.

“Sir, please close that door.”

“Come on, lady, I’m dyin’ here” went unspoken.

Back on the beach, I continued downing H2O like never before. Even when satiated, I forced myself to keep knocking down the Evian. In nothing flat, I was hit by nausea, dizziness and a weird left-side-only headache. Thinking I was experiencing heat stroke … I forced down more water! Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was soon literally drop-dead intoxicated.

At the same time, Sean was also going through his own form of dehydration. We had both hit the wall, NASCAR-grade hits. We meekly departed the event, my skin having gone from tan to an odd gray tint.

Thank goodness Sean was driving. The trip back to LBI allowed me to recover; only now realizing I might have been that close to going to the big volleyball court in the sky.

TOUCH OF TURBINE TALK: I’m going relatively light on wind farm matters this week, though I see there is yet another Save LBI meeting scheduled for Sunday, Aug. 27 at 5 PM. It will take place on Sixth Street and Bayview Avenue in Barnegat Light.

It’s not like there aren’t a slew of new matters to wax turbinically upon. One that must be immediately addressed is the plume effect regularly found trailing North Sea turbines. The pluming presents as discolored water. Aerial views indicate a plume can extend many miles, with each turbine producing its own plume.

The plumes are likely ocean stirs, similar to upwellings, the result of wind and astronomical currents running into the turbines. The resistance diverts water flow downward and outward. Possibly adding to the stir are the spinning blades as they impact the ocean water surface below.

In an article titled “The Atmospheric and Oceanic Wakes of Offshore Wind Turbines and Their Effects on Local Marine Environment,” Princeton’s High Meadows Environmental Institute writes, “Offshore turbines create atmospheric wakes that excite surface waves, which in turn generate flow below the water’s surface. Observational evidence has shown that subsurface flow can produce underwater sediment plumes that stretch for miles downstream of offshore turbines.”

How the plumes of turbid water might impact the ecosystem is part of a research project led by Princeton engineering professors Michael E. Mueller, Luc Deike, Elie Bou-Zeid and Marcus Hultmark. A major part of the project is a simulation of the atmospheric, surface and underwater turbulence created by offshore wind turbines.

Regarding plumes, the institute explains, “Thick clouds of sediment can prevent sunlight from reaching subsurface depths and disrupt the distribution of nutrients, potentially starving marine animals and plants, as well as harming breeding areas for the fish on which many coastal communities rely.”

To me this is getting down to the scientific nitty-gritty of farm builds. Not that the aesthetic and political aspects aren’t major players, but the lab-proven impacts that turbines might have on the overall marine environment will be a major determinant of where turbinization goes in N.J., especially in the wake (pun intended) of the upcoming quasi experimental Wind 1 farm off A.C.

As I read it, there’s an aspect of turbine-related plumes that could increase their impacts. On any given day, a plume forms on the leeward side of the turbines, based on prevailing winds. As the wind switches, the plumes shift. Eventually, a single plume can affect all compass points surrounding a turbine, i.e., a 360-degree impact zone. Thus, based on outward gradients, each turbine produces a circular sphere of influence. Through overlap with other turbines, an entire farm zone can be repeatedly plumed. We’re now talking a lot of ground and sea, not just the narrow trail of a given plume.

RUNDOWN: On the semi-oddity front, I see where some Spanish mackerel are on-scene. These can be taken off rocks, thinking in terms of Barnegat Inlet. Near-in boat fishing can also be in Spanish mac territory.

I’ve plugged them with decent success. They respond best to speedily retrieved metals, as in just my kind of AD/HD casting. I’ve done nicely using simple long-casting Ava jigs, though there are many elaborate metal jigs offering an incredible look – if only to the caster. See Sea Striker line of metals.

While lighter 10- to 12-pound mono line offers the truest test of skill with these macs, they have nasty teeth. This demands a heavier mono leader or even steel leader, especially with the cost of bitten-off lures.

The hot zone for Spanish macs is about 8 feet down, though I’ve seen them come near the surface when onto a fleeing metal, like an original Clark’s Spoon.

Overall, going after macs is much like plugging for blues, though slightly speedier – which is saying something.

Speaking of bluefish, the summer remains interestingly bluesy. One-pounders and slightly larger versions are all about, bay, ocean and inlet, with the South Jetty offering fun hooking, though typically off-and-on.

While unlucky to even suggest, we might be in for a brisk bluefishing fall, though there are no signs of larger fish, short of some midsized models being taken by boat anglers.

I’m cleaning my dehydrator in hopes the eater-sized blues come on strong when Holgate opens to buggies in a few weeks.

Based on Walt P. reports and backed by a ton of radio chatter, the bottom of Barnegat Inlet is caked with undersized fluke.

Boat anglers just outside the sandbars are now into the doormats. “I threw back half a dozen that were way over 18 inches” emailed a south-end boat fishing regular.

While the beachfront is still issuing keeper flatties, things have slowed a bit.

As to fluking season, we’re good through Sept. 27. Bag remains two fish between 17 and 18 inches, along with one over 18 inches.

Blowfish are worth a mention. They’re showing bayside with greater regularity now that the spawn is done; seemingly not quite ready for chumming after.

Striped bass remain a minor player. For the umpteenth time, I’ll mention early a.m. surfcasting along the LBI beachfront can plug up a couple be-striped takers. Jigging plastics is the sunrise ticket since it can also nab fluke – and unwanted blues, per a sunrise regular.

Another super sheepshead was caught near the base of the Big Bridges. It went for “crab” on a “tog hook.”

A triggerfish was also caught thereabouts. It took a small piece of squid. Ocean anglers have gotten into goodly numbers of delicious triggerfish. Please cook them in the round.

For surfline panfishermen, spot, kingfish and an occasional Atlantic croaker are taking small baits presented on small hooks. Subdued surf is sorta mandatory, as is keeping the baits moving, even to a slow-retrieve degree.

Cobia are out there, thickly, for the taking. They can be found just a couple miles out.

[email protected]

You must be logged in to post a comment.