by Flack » Sun Nov 04, 2018 7:54 pm
I can't remember a time when I wasn't terrified of snakes. When I was in grade school I owned a set of
Funk & Wagnall's Wildlife Encyclopedias, and the entry on snakes contained pictures that were so colorful and so frightening that I was afraid to even touch the page.
Growing up, my backyard backed up to a big creek. For years, we didn't even have a fence. I could just walk out our patio door, across our backyard, and down into the creek. Some of the kids took their fishing poles down there, although most of us just took bits of bacon and plastic cups and caught crawdads for fun. Around the Fourth of July, the creek was where you set off your M80s and all the other big fireworks that your parents wouldn't let you light.
Two backyards west of ours is where the creek ended, underneath a bridge. A lot of neighborhood kids learned how to smoke under the bridge. Some of the older kids would climb and hang from the metal girders that supported the bridge while the big trucks from the local cement company passed overhead. It was deafening loud when they did. Little bits of concrete would fall every time a truck passed overhead and I was always sure that thing was going to collapse.
One summer day a bunch of us kids were hanging out near the bridge. I was standing on the ground next to someone, who was standing next to David. All the older kids -- David's older brother and his friends -- were sitting above on the edge of the bridge with their legs dangling over the edge. All of a sudden, David's brother jumped off the bridge, diving like a hawk that had found a field mouse. But it wasn't a mouse. He had spied a big snake -- a water moccasin -- just inches away from his brother. His feet had landed hard on the snake, crushing its skull and, at least according to him, saving his brother's life. I couldn't tell if it was a water moccasin or not, but just being that close to a snake was scary enough for me.
One of the other kids, Randy, cut the snake's head off with his pocket knife and sliced it open from end to end. It was the first time I had seen fresh guts and was surprised by the bright colors. Randy was the kid that everyone just kind of accepted would become a serial killer someday. He was the kid who stuck firecrackers inside frogs' mouths and lit them, and the one who would pee on Freeman's electric fence, even when no one dared him to. Someone told me Randy used to take Bibles down to the creek and put cigarettes out on their covers, but in retrospect it's kind of tough to believe he had access to a Bible.
It wouldn't have been so bad if the snakes had stayed down in the creek, but they didn't. Whenever the water got too low, they would come up toward the houses, looking for a drink. And when the water got too high, it would flush them up onto dry land. My dad kept a pellet gun next to the back door with a scope mounted to it that was worth more than the pellet gun. He could pop a rabbit in his tomato patch before it knew what hit it. And when the snakes would come up near the house, he'd pop them too. Sometimes a couple of times, until they stopped slithering.
When I was in high school, my sister got a job at the herbitarium at the local zoo -- the snake house. After working there for a couple of weeks, they let her bring one of the snakes -- a 6' long ball python -- home. She put it in an aquarium and put all these rocks and plants and lights in there because she was a snake expert. Two days later, it escaped. My parents turned the house upside down, and came to the conclusion that it had made it out of the house, probably down to the creek. Three months later, my mom was vacuuming under the couch and the snake came out. It had been balled up down there, all the time, just hanging out. I sometimes have nightmares about finding snakes in my couch.
I thought when I grew up, things would be different. I lived in an apartment briefly and in homes ever since then, but for the past seven years I've lived in a home that backs up to a pond, and suddenly it's the 1980s all over again. When the pond levels fluctuate, here come the snakes. Sometimes they wiggle their way up into my trees, waiting to pounce on whatever or whomever unsuspectingly walks underneath them. I don't have water moccasins or anything like that, just garter snakes. They say garter snakes are harmless, but not if you break your neck running away from one or have a heart attack when one jumps out of the bushes.
The last time Susan went down into our storm shelter, she found a dead snake. It was a baby one, small enough to crawl through the little holes in the metal door designed to let air in. I guess he fell down there, couldn't find his way out, and starved to death. Good. On one occasion, we found one in the house. It was small, no longer than a pencil, but a snake is a snake. And this isn't the 1700s, some point in time when man and beast lived side by side in the wilderness. This was in 2017, and there was a snake between my surge protector and a pair of Nike shoes. We eventually whisked him out the front door with a broom, but while I was doing it, he lunged and struck at the broom. That's why snakes are assholes. Because I'm 6' tall and he's 6" long and not even poisonous and he'll still try and bite you on his way out the door. Asshole.
I say all of that to say this. My uncle, who lives far away from the lights and noise of civilization, came home yesterday and found a rattlesnake in his front yard. Not a tiny little pencil-sized snake but a big-ass, "I'mma kill ya"-sized rattlesnake, hiding behind a propane bottle and waiting for him to walk by. I adore my uncle a lot but I don't visit him too often, for that reason. When I was a kid I almost stepped on a scorpion down at his place, and he told me before I went to bed to check under the covers for snakes. I slept on the couch instead.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't terrified of snakes. When I was in grade school I owned a set of [url=https://archive.org/details/funkwagnallswild01burt]Funk & Wagnall's Wildlife Encyclopedias[/url], and the entry on snakes contained pictures that were so colorful and so frightening that I was afraid to even touch the page.
Growing up, my backyard backed up to a big creek. For years, we didn't even have a fence. I could just walk out our patio door, across our backyard, and down into the creek. Some of the kids took their fishing poles down there, although most of us just took bits of bacon and plastic cups and caught crawdads for fun. Around the Fourth of July, the creek was where you set off your M80s and all the other big fireworks that your parents wouldn't let you light.
Two backyards west of ours is where the creek ended, underneath a bridge. A lot of neighborhood kids learned how to smoke under the bridge. Some of the older kids would climb and hang from the metal girders that supported the bridge while the big trucks from the local cement company passed overhead. It was deafening loud when they did. Little bits of concrete would fall every time a truck passed overhead and I was always sure that thing was going to collapse.
One summer day a bunch of us kids were hanging out near the bridge. I was standing on the ground next to someone, who was standing next to David. All the older kids -- David's older brother and his friends -- were sitting above on the edge of the bridge with their legs dangling over the edge. All of a sudden, David's brother jumped off the bridge, diving like a hawk that had found a field mouse. But it wasn't a mouse. He had spied a big snake -- a water moccasin -- just inches away from his brother. His feet had landed hard on the snake, crushing its skull and, at least according to him, saving his brother's life. I couldn't tell if it was a water moccasin or not, but just being that close to a snake was scary enough for me.
One of the other kids, Randy, cut the snake's head off with his pocket knife and sliced it open from end to end. It was the first time I had seen fresh guts and was surprised by the bright colors. Randy was the kid that everyone just kind of accepted would become a serial killer someday. He was the kid who stuck firecrackers inside frogs' mouths and lit them, and the one who would pee on Freeman's electric fence, even when no one dared him to. Someone told me Randy used to take Bibles down to the creek and put cigarettes out on their covers, but in retrospect it's kind of tough to believe he had access to a Bible.
It wouldn't have been so bad if the snakes had stayed down in the creek, but they didn't. Whenever the water got too low, they would come up toward the houses, looking for a drink. And when the water got too high, it would flush them up onto dry land. My dad kept a pellet gun next to the back door with a scope mounted to it that was worth more than the pellet gun. He could pop a rabbit in his tomato patch before it knew what hit it. And when the snakes would come up near the house, he'd pop them too. Sometimes a couple of times, until they stopped slithering.
When I was in high school, my sister got a job at the herbitarium at the local zoo -- the snake house. After working there for a couple of weeks, they let her bring one of the snakes -- a 6' long ball python -- home. She put it in an aquarium and put all these rocks and plants and lights in there because she was a snake expert. Two days later, it escaped. My parents turned the house upside down, and came to the conclusion that it had made it out of the house, probably down to the creek. Three months later, my mom was vacuuming under the couch and the snake came out. It had been balled up down there, all the time, just hanging out. I sometimes have nightmares about finding snakes in my couch.
I thought when I grew up, things would be different. I lived in an apartment briefly and in homes ever since then, but for the past seven years I've lived in a home that backs up to a pond, and suddenly it's the 1980s all over again. When the pond levels fluctuate, here come the snakes. Sometimes they wiggle their way up into my trees, waiting to pounce on whatever or whomever unsuspectingly walks underneath them. I don't have water moccasins or anything like that, just garter snakes. They say garter snakes are harmless, but not if you break your neck running away from one or have a heart attack when one jumps out of the bushes.
The last time Susan went down into our storm shelter, she found a dead snake. It was a baby one, small enough to crawl through the little holes in the metal door designed to let air in. I guess he fell down there, couldn't find his way out, and starved to death. Good. On one occasion, we found one in the house. It was small, no longer than a pencil, but a snake is a snake. And this isn't the 1700s, some point in time when man and beast lived side by side in the wilderness. This was in 2017, and there was a snake between my surge protector and a pair of Nike shoes. We eventually whisked him out the front door with a broom, but while I was doing it, he lunged and struck at the broom. That's why snakes are assholes. Because I'm 6' tall and he's 6" long and not even poisonous and he'll still try and bite you on his way out the door. Asshole.
I say all of that to say this. My uncle, who lives far away from the lights and noise of civilization, came home yesterday and found a rattlesnake in his front yard. Not a tiny little pencil-sized snake but a big-ass, "I'mma kill ya"-sized rattlesnake, hiding behind a propane bottle and waiting for him to walk by. I adore my uncle a lot but I don't visit him too often, for that reason. When I was a kid I almost stepped on a scorpion down at his place, and he told me before I went to bed to check under the covers for snakes. I slept on the couch instead.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/3IbvAOn.png[/img]