I have an adopted state: Texas. For the past three years, I have been visiting Texas on a semi-regular basis because I have been given the privilege of being a contributing columnist for The Dallas Morning News, and periodically during the year, I am invited to join the meetings of editors and writers at the paper.
I wrote freelance essays for The Wall Street Journal, and when one of the editors I worked with at the Journal moved to The Dallas Morning News, he suggested that I submit work to his new paper. So that is how a guy from New Jersey is writing for one of the greatest and oldest papers in the country. As I said, a privilege.
And now, because I visit so often, I am able to catch up with friends in Austin, San Antonio, Boerne, Kerrville and I enjoy every minute: O. Henry’s House and the famous bats in Austin, the River Walk and the Alamo in San Antonio, the Hill Country surrounding Boerne, and the canyons at Kerrville. Dallas and Fort Worth are gems. Houston startled me with its beauty.
But I have to admit something: A little bit of Texas frightens me. A friend invited me to visit his 1,500-acre ranch in southeast Texas a few weeks ago. I live in the suburbs of New Jersey, where property boundaries are established in yards.
Opinion
I was taken for a tour of the ranch and l loved the beauty of the wide expanse and the silence. The air was fresh. The horizon was a blaze of ribbons in the early evening.
I think in a way that Texas chose the wrong nickname: The Lone Star State? You have all the stars. At the ranch that evening, I stood in an open field and saw what no one sees in New Jersey: The Milky Way, all the constellations, a Texas stampede of stars traveling above me like fireworks exploding on the ceiling of the AT&T Stadium.
Yes, the excitement and beauty of Texas, but, as in life, there is always a downside. I am afraid of being eaten in Texas.
When I was walking on the ranch, I asked my friend, more for conversation, if there were rattlesnakes. “Oh sure,” I was told as casually as if I had asked if there were horses in Texas.
“Oh, sure. Lots of rattlesnakes. Copperheads, too, and coral snakes as well.”
New Jersey has garter snakes, about as dangerous as worms or shoelaces, and I haven’t seen one in years.
“We have bobcats, too.”
“Here, on the ranch?”
“Oh, sure.”
Isn’t a bobcat a lion? Don’t lions eat gladiators and tourists from New Jersey? There was once a feral cat in my yard that I fed for a number of months. It purred a lot.
“We have javelinas too.”
“What’s a javelina?”
“Oh, some people think they’re wild pigs. They can weigh up to 60 pounds. They destroy crops and dig up the soil. They do lots of damage.”
“Are they dangerous?”
“Oh, sure. They’ll charge you, bite you if provoked, even use their sharp tusks.”
Tusks! I was bitten by a chipmunk last summer while cleaning out my garden shed.
As I continued on the generous tour, I leaned into a cactus and for days, I felt this irritation in my thigh. There are no cacti in New Jersey ready to attack me.
And then the chiggers.
I had never heard of chiggers and when I returned to New Jersey the next day, my ankle began to itch … and itch … and itch. My entire left ankle was covered with small, red welts. I had no idea what happened. Did I contract a Texas plague? Was my hotel filled with bed bugs? When I looked up my symptoms on the internet, chiggers! Chiggers attacked me on the ranch the day before.
Yes, we have mosquitoes in my backyard and an occasional tick, but if I stayed long enough on the Texas ranch, perhaps I would have been picked up and carried off into the Texas sunset by a swarm of victorious chiggers.
“We have scorpions too!”
“Scorpions? You have scorpions in Texas?”
“Oh, sure!”
Now I understand why Texas has the charming tradition of wearing those beautiful boots: yes, for riding and for keeping steady in stirrups and staying secure on the backs of horses. But I also learned that they wear them to protect their legs from sharp bushes, cactus plants, scorpions… and snakes!
I have wild squirrels in my backyard, big ones that are about 20 inches long and weigh about one pound.
Just before I left the ranch, I thanked my friend and joked, “Well, at least there aren’t any alligators in Texas.”
“Alligators?” he said with a smile.
“YOU HAVE ALLIGATORS IN TEXAS?”
“Oh, sure.”