Critters! That is the term my maw would use to describe any creature living outdoors with more than 4 legs or no legs at all. A couple of critters whose names would come up often were copperheads and crawdaddies. I saw critters as God’s pets.
Believe it or not; I never saw a copperhead in all my years of sitting on the front porch at my grandparents’ home. However, their legend lives quite vividly in the stories of the locals. But every time (which was often on a hot summer day) my cousin and I would head out the front door to search for crawdaddies in the creek across the road; my maw would yell from the kitchen, “Watch out for those copperheads.” So, the story that was told on our front porch about copperheads also involved black snakes. The folklore was because we had blacksnakes on our side of the creek; we would never have copperheads. The Black snakes would eat the copperheads (so was the legend) so we were safe on our side of the creek. Therefore, naturally, going across the road to the creek put me in great danger of running into a copperhead.
I never felt scared of seeing a copperhead. Perhaps it was my faith in God sitting in his big mountainous chair overlooking me that made me feel safe in that creek. Besides, I was more interested in the crawdaddies that I might find in the creek than some silly snake.
My cousin and I would run barefoot across the hot road eager to put our feet in the cool creek water. Such a refreshing feeling! Once we found our secure footing among the river rock, the crawdaddy hunting began. The folklore around crawdaddies is that if one pinches you, it won’t let go until it thunders. Well, I never was pinched by one, so I don’t know if that legend holds true or not. I often found crawdads under the bridge that took you over the creek to another hollow. I found them to be so quirky looking that once I caught one, I would inspect it for what seemed like an hour. If you hold them just so, they can’t bite you and they don’t move. My in-depth visual study of one would most often end to the sound of my maw yelling down the street, “Lisa, it’s time to come in.” At her command, I would gently put the crawdaddy back under a rock on the water’s edge.
This was my first interaction with God’s critters outside of science class at school. I always respected these critters; even the ones that could hurt me. Afterall, copperheads and crawdaddies had a God looking out for them, too.