Rusty Saber: Tasty snake filet not on Rusty menu

After a spate of reruns, this Rusty Saber is live and in living color. Before leaving for a month on Maui, I announced that I was off to molt, to shed my winter coat. Well, I molted. My winter coat is gone. Under no circumstances do I want to grow another one. Bring on springtime.

I believe my wife and I have a pretty good thing going; we live one month per year on Maui and 11 months in Springfield. That translates into a month in paradise and 11 in God's Country. That's a winning combination. While we were gone, some things changed. When we left home, Bill Clinton was president; now George W. Bush is at the helm.

I suppose this means that hanging and/or pregnant chads are no longer of interest to anyone except those investigative journalists who intend to count the Florida presidential ballots in order to find out who actually won that election, assuming they can figure out what to do with those pesky chads.

When we left, Janet Reno was the U.S. Attorney General; now this office is held by Springfield's own John Ashcroft. His confirmation got nasty. Before being confirmed, his detractors accused this man, who was fit to be Missouri attorney general, governor and senator, of being unfit to be the U.S. attorney general. How could Missouri voters have been so uninformed?

The opposition accused him of being behind just about everything bad that has ever happened, everything from the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa to the sinking of the Titanic.

We've been going to the same spot on Maui long enough that we don't do many of the typical "touristy" sort of things. We mostly just hang out and try to soak up the glorious surroundings. Our Maui life is spent in the slow lane.

On one occasion, however, we were at a spot visited by a lot of tourists; I saw something I've never seen before and I doubt that I'll see again. Among a busload of Japanese tourists, I saw a family of four get off the bus and, I'm not making this up, none of the four was carrying a camera of any sort.

I know, it's hard to believe. Rarely will you see any tourist family without at least one camera among them, but a Japanese family? Never.

The other Japanese visitors, like all the other tourists, were busily snapping pictures of everything in sight. Some were taking pictures of others taking pictures of others looking at the scenery. But the four camera-less members of this one family were sightseeing, with nary a snapshot.

If only I had my camera I could have taken a picture of this family not taking pictures. There's never a camera around when you need one.

The Chinese New Year, the Year of the Snake, was a huge news item while we were on Maui. Since there is a large Asian population throughout the Hawaiian Islands, the advent of the Chinese New Year is an important event.

There are lots of colorful parades with lively Oriental music and the like. In the Year of the Snake, a lot of information about snakes could be found. Apparently snake meat will be a huge dining staple during the year. By chance, I happened on to a local TV broadcast about the preparation of snake meat.

The video clip, shot somewhere in the Orient, came with no warning about the content. The narrative concerned how snake meat would be a big item during the Year of the Snake. The scene was in a restaurant where a waiter was showing a large snake (nonpoisonous, I assume) to a table of diners, like he would display a bottle of wine for approval.

When I actually began paying attention was when the waiter, in full view of the camera, cut off the snake's head and drained its blood (the narrator informed listeners that the blood is considered a delicacy wherever it was that the clip was taped).

The waiter skinned the poor critter and began to fillet it. I assume the final act was to cook it at the table. As for me, I had about all of this cross-cultural encounter that I wanted I turned it off. I can tell you this: If diners had to watch animals slaughtered in front of them at restaurants, there would be a lot more vegetarians.

It was good to be away. It is good to be home. I am ready to once again flail away with the Rusty Saber.

(Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University and a Springfield public relations consultant.)