Shooting Snakes

"Coming Home"*

*From Reader's Digest:

As a woman in the Marines, I often don't feel as
feminine as when I had a civilian job in which I
wore dresses and left my hair down.

One day I was feeling especially depressed about
this and couldn't wait to get home and change.
When I arrived, I found that my friend and her
18-month-old daughter had been waiting for me.

My friend is married to a Marine, and my worries
about appearing less than feminine only increased
when her little girl glanced up at me and yelled
happily, "Daddy's home!"

*************************************************

"Shooting Snakes"*

*An infantry brigade was training in the summer heat,
learning methods to counter Russian offensive tactics.
That summer, the area had experienced an infestation
of rattlesnakes. Officers and NCOs were given one
magazine of live ammunition to counter this danger,
as several men had already been bitten.

So much ammunition was expended shooting,
supposedly, at snakes that the post commander
demanded that every officer and NCO who had
shot at a snake present the dead snake as proof
that the expenditure of rounds was justifiable.

The next day, the post commander entered his office
and spotted a shoe box on his desk. He opened it,
revealing a sleepy and sluggish, but very live, rattlesnake.

Inside the box were twenty expended cartridges, and a short note.

The note said, "I missed!"
Received on Tue Nov 9 06:18:21 2010