Mojo's Favorite Mother's Various Stabs at Artistry

Mojo's mom is a quilter, we all know, and quilters, if you don't have the good fortune of knowing one, are a Breed Apart, an eccentric and fun group of (mostly) ladies who can kill their own snakes, as the vernacular puts it, although to be perfectly honest Mojo likes snakes and does not appreciate those who blindly kill them just because they happen to be snakes. Spiders, too. Both spiders and snakes play important respective roles in the ecosystem and for the most part just want to be left alone and try to run away from humans as soon as they can. Mojo's Favorite Mother of course is responsible for passing on this Boundless Love for All of God's Creatures--so long as Mojo's blood is not spilled, of course--and I always thought that the following anecdote was indicative of the sort of open-minded and fair person Mom was and is. For according to HER, Mojo's Favorite Mother was actually afraid of spiders and snakes, but she did not wish to pass this illogical bias on to her children. So when we were kids, Mom used to encourage us to handle daddy longlegs--who, granted, Mojo now knows are not actual spiders but a type of arachnid called a Harvestman--and would sometimes let them crawl on her to actively show us they were harmless. Snakes were another matter, for as try as she might she never got over her fear of them, but when she encountered one in the garden she would just calmly walk to the house and ask one of us to temporarily remove the fellow from her presence. And once when I was young and stupid I accidentally stepped on a very large rat snake that was sunning itself and got very badly bitten. My mother was afraid, since I was in hysterics, that I would grow to be afraid of snakes, so all the way to the doctor's office (for a tetanus shot) I was lectured on how it was my thoughtless actions that caused the poor snake to have to defend itself. So by the time I got to the doctor's my snivelling was substantially reduced and indeed later that summer my dad specifically took me out snake-hunting (just catching them, not hurting them) just to make sure there were no ill effects from my traumatic encounter. I did not realize that was what he was doing until in retrospect, but we all know some of us are rather slow on the uptake.  MORE Mojo! »