The Daily Times from Salisbury, Maryland • 10

10.000 A NEIGHBORHOODS Tuesday, January 10, 1995 Page 10 The Daily Times STYLE Erma BOMBECK Bats are good for us, really Fell, the bat people have A few spoken. weeks I ago publicly announced I did not want a bat kit for Christmas. (I didn't get one.) But the response in support of bats has been overwhelming. Writers have the animals doing everything from bringing peace to the world to curing a bad back. Robert Benson, an officer in Bat Conservation International said the bat population is declining at an alarming rate, due primarily to the loss of natural habitat and human disturbance based on ignorance and fear.

He pointed out their significance in the ecosystem. They rank as a primary predator of insects that fly by night. A single bat has been known to catch 600 mosquitosized insects in just one hour, and the 25 million Mexican free-tailed bats from Bracken Cave in central Texas can consume an estimated 250 tons of insect pests nightly. In an effort to increase the species' numbers, bat houses are being promoted. Some bat houses have attracted as many as 5,000 to 10,000 bats in a single area.

Hold it right there, Mr. Benson. I appreciate all the things you've just said; I don't set bat traps and I wouldn't dream of wearing a bat-skin coat; but if I attracted 10,000 bats to my neighborhood, the homeowners association would pass an ordinance to turn my home into a landfill. Don't take it personally, Mr. Benson.

We have all kinds of restrictions. You can't have Christmas tree lights so elaborate that they tie up traffic for your neighbors. Dogs no longer can run to a neighbor's yard and do their business. The owner is responsible for scooping it up and disposing of it. I love animals.

I really do. I once bought a huge bird feeder that we attached to the outside of our kitchen window. When the word got out that we put out 50 pounds of seed a month, birds took taxis to get to our place. Then we noted the feed that fell to the ground attracted large rats, who in turn attracted large snakes. Someone told us we were lucky to have snakes because they kept the rodent population down.

(I think he must have married close.) I thank Mr. Benson for enlightening me and possibly a lot of other people who do not think of bats the way they regard a canary. But what we should be studying is how come bats can eat all those mosquitoes and still not have made mosquitoes extinct. Good neighbors We need your help. If you are familiar with the happenings and history of Holland Island in Dorchester County, we want to hear from you.

Whether you are a current or past resident of the community, please call us at (410) 749-7171, Ext. 243, or toll free, 1-800-44-DAILY, Ext. 243. And if there is a village you'd like to see featured, call and tell us. Defining Shaft Ox Corner Explanations are numerous for oddly named Sussex community By BRICE STUMP Daily Times Staff Writer you don't live in or near Shaft Ox Corner in Sussex County, just getting here can be an adventure.

Some say the place used to be called Baker's Corner at the intersection of Nine-Foot Road (Route 26) and Gumboro Road, which, until a few months ago, was Route 25. To everyone's surprise, said resident Harlene Riddle, a threequarter-mile stretch of road here is now Route 30. Where the 30 came from, she said, is still a mystery and it confuses people. Then there's the way the name is pronounced. In a rush, said lifelong resident Russell Esham, 77, Shaft Ox becomes Shavox (Shav-ox).

"That's just easier to say," Esham said. "That's Gumboro slang," Riddle's husband, Glen, said, "But there ain't nobody hardly that knows that road out there is Route 25." "I always called this Baker's Corner until about 30 years or so ago," Esham said, "Nothing exciting ever happens here, except for people looking for treasure." It has been said over the years that a good deal of money was found in a field near the community. There are no specifics, but the rumors persist and have put Shaft Ox Corner on the treasure hunter's map. And down the road a ways "on the Maryland side," said Pasher Parker, 90, is the real Shavox where the name doesn't become Shaft Ox when it is said slowly. The origin of the name is a mystery, too, said Glen Riddle, but he has heard one possible explanation for the most unusual name that really means nothing to those living here.

"They used to pull carts with oxen and there's a strip of sand that runs through here. When the oxen broke the shaft, they called the place Shaft Ox. That's the story I've always heard," Riddle said. The king connection round 1934, said Salisbury A resident attorney and Mae former Truitt, 85, the federal government engaged in extensive reforestation and wanted local attorneys to search titles (land ownership) for property being reforested. "I took the job at 50 cents an hour.

One day one of the government officials came down and we went out to talk to an owner. It was a miserable day in February. The lane was in awful, muddy, terrible condition and the man had a new car and didn't want to drive it up the lane, and I didn't want to walk up, so he went to the house alone. "He found out that the family had a document on sheepskin, a grant signed by King George III and it had been in the family ever since. The correct name (of the estate that may have given its name to the community) is not 'Shaft I Andrew "Sheddy" Hudson, 78, ner.

When he was 18, Hudson Shaft Ox Corner (13 DEL MD 50 Berlin Salisbury 113 Snow Hill Sahler don't remember the name of the family, but for some reason the name Parker keeps coming to mind," Truitt said. Pasher Parker, 90, said he doesn't know who in his family may have had the sheepskin, but the family has been in the area for generations. From the late 1600s Shaft Ox Corner has stayed small and 189556 1895 99 $10 SHENKINS el ACCEL MOROSO Tale of 'the Burnt' monster here used to be some kind terrified of "varmint" residents 1 that near Shaft Ox Corner almost 60 years ago, said life-long resident Andrew "Sheddy" Hudson, 78. Whatever it was, it prowled the mysterious depths of the Cypress Swamp that once burned for a year decades ago, and locals began calling it Burnt Cypress Swamp and then simply, "the Burnt." "The swamp caught on fire when I was 8 year old. Nobody don't know what started the fire.

It 1 was in the spring and burnt a whole year. It burnt holes all over the swamp, burnt out places three or four acres (across) as deep as your head. It (the swamp) comes right up to Shaft Ox Corner," Hudson said. "My uncle lived on one side of the woods and we lived on the other. He was in the hog business and about once or twice a week there was something come in there and killed one of the big shoats, you know.

He was telling my daddy about it and my dad had 'coon dogs. He wanted him to come around there with his 'coon dogs and see if he could find out what was doing it. "So me and my brother (Zeke) took the dogs one night and got close to the fence at the hog pen and heard a strange voice, like a sireen more than anything else. But it would take about a minute for it to be a howl. When it screamed you could hear it for a mile.

That scared me and my brother to death, pretty near to it. "Our dogs were after a 'coon and our idea was to follow our dogs and get this 'coon right quick and put them on this thing that was followerin' us a hollering. So the dogs ran that 'coon from Riddle Swamp through Cullen Swamp through to Buzzard Swamp and took it in the Burnt. We was in the Burnt there 'bout three. or four hours before things got SO bad.

After a while it (the monster) got up between us and our dogs a hollering and we slipped out and left the dogs in the Burnt and all," Hudson said. "I was scared so bad I couldn't even keep my cap on. You ain't never been scared until you can't keep your cap on. We came home and told the story and nobody would believe it. "Lisha Tingle went a squirreling one afternoon and it got after him a hollering and he left the woods.

And then Elijah Lowe was in there one morning checking his mus'rat traps. He heared it hollering and he left from there. From then on he wouldn't even check his traps unless his son went with him. "Lisha was in there one morning 'coon huntin' and his dogs hit a 'coon and this thing got hollering between him and the house so he kept right still until this thing worked around him a hollering and then he went home. There was a big frost on the ground and he saw where this thing had walked down this downed tree and he said it had toes as long as his fingers.

He was scared to death of it and he left his dogs and everything in there. Nobody ever seen it. When they heard this thing a hollering they got out of there," he said. And as mysteriously as it came the Burnt monster left, but not before the whole neighborhood feared an attack of some kind. "Somebody said it was a 'catamount' (mountain lion), something half as big as a tiger with a funny head," said Hudson's wife, Juanita.

"Other than that, nothing excitin' I ever knowed of ever happened around Hudson said. Brice Stump relaxes in the doorway of an old corn and his brother were on the trail of the that is the way Riddle and his family would like to see things remain. "No sense building roads and townhouses down here if it's going to look like the city where people are coming down here to get away from. There'll be no housing development down here if I have anything to do with it. Less is best," he said.

And snow geese, by the thousands, far outnumber the 20 or so folks living here. Sightseers pull off the road to watch as acres of fields become transformed into a winter landscape by flocks of geese, their white plumage glistening like snow in the sun. Built for speed The visitors geese here, are just the real temporary attraction year-round is Riddle's 1987 Chevy Camaro, which is known to thousands of car-racing enthusiasts. For years he has been racing at the Route 13 Dragway in Delmar, and has become the goodwill ambassador of Shaft Ox Corner. "This is a super-gas car '87 Glen Riddle and his brother, Dallas, stand beside the fastest car in Shaft Ox Corner.

Times Photo by Brice Stump crib on his farm near Shaft Ox Corlegendary Burnt varmint. Chevy Camaro that runs a said at with 146 pride. (mph)," Riddle More than 20 years ago Riddle opened his auto service garage here and it remains the neighborhood's sole business. Still a farmer, working a couple hundred acres, Riddle also manages to be a full-time truck and car mechanic. His family has been here for generations, and there are so many Riddles here, said his brother, Dallas, that one strip of Nine-Foot Road has been nicknamed "Riddle Row." "There were 13 of us and most of us are still around here, 'cept I got one sister living in Florida.

But the rest are still right here," Riddle said. His garage may occupy the site of the old Ableman store, a country store that was closed soon after the turn of the century. "I don't even know where the name came from, but I have heard my dad say that Mr. Ableman, a Jew that came down the road from somewhere, used to have a store where the garage is. He started as a peddler, selling clothes off his back, then had the store at Shaft Ox.

He left there and went to Millsboro and went in the clothing business. He's dead and his three sons and daughter are dead," said Andrew "Sheddy" Hudson, 78, who lives near Shaft Ox Corner on Nine-Foot Road. There might be a lot of mysteries at Shaft Ox Corner, but Hudson has the satisfaction of knowing how his stretch of road got its name. "When they built it, they only built half a road. That's how it got its name," Hudson said.

Travel Tips: From Laurel take Route 24 east to the stop sign. Take a right onto Route 30 or Gumboro Road. Shaft Ox Corner is less than a mile down the road. Times Photo by Brice Stump.