The Snake

Hi Folks,

I haven’t posted in a while, but then again, that’s how I said it would be when I started this stupid blog. Ya’ get what you pay for.

Anyway, I want to tell you about “The Snake.” I don’t like snakes. They scare me. Not in the poop in your pants and cry for mama kind of way, but in a more rational “Is that thing close enough to bite me because if it is, I am going to shit in my pants and scream for help” way. Snakes seem to seek me out and find me. There is this bundle of neurons that fire in my head right before a snake encounter, and I get this weird, funky feeling. Really. It’s like my brain knows what is going on before I do, if that makes any sense. Maybe the snake is sending me ESP signals because it knows things might end badly. If I can’t figure out what kind of snake it is very quickly after I see it, then it usually ends up dead, and I end up at JC Penney looking for new jockey shorts. It’s not a good time for me or the snake. Now, I don’t want a bunch of OkeFenokee Joe types harassing the crap out of me through the e-mail about abusing snakes. I let the good ones live if I can tell that they are the good ones. Unfortunately, you’ve usually got to get really close to them to tell, and then, the next thing you know, you’re driving to JC Penney…

In the spring of 2007, I went turkey hunting in south Georgia with my ace turkey guide, "Bobby The Turkey Guide." We were driving along his property, and Bobby said “Hey. What have we got here?” And then I said “What” and he said “A rattlesnake”, and right then a shot of adrenaline pieced my entire chest, and I threw my neck back so hard to look as we passed it on the dirt road that I hit the roof of the truck cab with by head…Faen, that hurt. I had never seen a rattlesnake outside of a zoo display, and this was almost too much for my colon to handle. Bobby pulled over and I asked “What are you doing?” and he said “We gotta’ get it off the property. We gotta’ kill it. Do you want to do it?” Since I was the one with the shotgun, I said “Well, okay, I guess.” I got out, loaded up, and gave my 12-gauge a pump. That’s when Bobby said “Not with that. You’ll scare the birds!” I’m like, “WTF am I suppose to kill it with?” and he said “Pick up a stick or something.” At that point, I thought it was prudent to remind Bobby that a) he was the guide, b) I was the customer, and c) I was paying him cash monies to hunt for turkeys, not to hunt for a big stick. Especially not a big stick to kill some rattlesnake by the side of the road who would no doubt try to bite me and make me soil my new, ultra lightweight camo underwear. So, Bobby pulled a giant tractor tine (i.e., a big, heavy, metal pole) out of the back of the truck. He went over to the snake and poked it with the tine. It coiled up and began to rattle just like on Wild Kingdom. Bobby then took the tine and whacked the rattlesnake over the head a few times until it was unconscious. He then buried the head of the snake into the ground with the end of the tine and told me to hold the tine while he cut off its rattles. I held the tine tightly to make sure the snake did not get us while Bobby cut off its rattles. Bobby seemed happy about ridding the property of the poisonous snake. He started to laugh at me because I was holding the tine so damn hard as if the snake would rise up from the dead and bite me. We then went on with the rest of our turkey hunt. We got skunked! It was the dreaded rattlesnake curse! I’m sure of it.

About a month later, I was in the deer woods in east Georgia where I hunt in the fall. I was checking on my stand. I had cut a nice path through the woods the previous year, so I could walk at a pretty good pace. There was a tiny little ditch on the way to my stand, and I thought to myself – “Self, I bet that ditch would fill up with water if it would ever rain in Georgia. And I bet that if it did fill up with water, then snakes would come around and hang out here.” No shit, that’s really what I said to myself. I wasn’t too worried because I NEVER go into the woods without my Smith and Wesson revolver which I keep loaded with three snake shot shells (they are like really tiny shotgun shells for a revolver) and three 357 magnum rounds (i.e., big ass bullets). The first three are for snakes and the last three are for wild hogs, coyotes, or hillbilly perverts like those from Deliverance or The Hills Have Eyes. Plus, it had not rained in I don’t know how long, so I thought nothing more of it. Well I continued walking to my stand. When I got to my stand, it looked fine, so I headed back. I was going to call my hunting buddy on my cell phone to see if he wanted to go into town. However, something made me think better of it, so instead of talking on the cell, I decided to watch where I was going. Imagine that. Somebody who pays attention to what they are doing instead of talking on the cell phone! I’m such a dinosaur. Faen. Well, as I was walking up to that very same ditch I crossed minutes earlier, those neurons fired in my head, and I was overwhelmed with that funky feeling. Sure enough, there was a REALLY BIG snake about 8 feet away from me sitting right on the edge of the ditch to the side of my path. I recognized its skin pattern right away. It was a timber rattlesnake just like the one Bobby and I came across weeks before. I pulled out my revolver and began to shoot. Bamm!! The snake got pissed off and coiled up. Bamm!! I saw its head wobble and then the head plopped on the ground. Taking no chances, I shot it again! Bamm!! As it turned out, only the first shot was snake shot. The last two were 357 bullets. I lucked out. Well, as I passed by the snake, I thought to myself “Damn, that snake is huge. I’ve got to get these rattles like all those other southern boys do. It’s part of my heritage. Yadda, yadda, yadda.” I looked around for a big long stick to bury its head it the dirt. I found a stick, and proceeded to pin the snake’s head into the ground. It started to wiggle. “Ahhhh. Shit, I hope it’s dead.” All of those stories about fangs from long dead snakes pricking people and making them die were now flowing through my head. I got out the Swiss army knife from my pocket, and at that moment, I realized that physics was not on my side. I could not stand and hold this 5-foot long stick while simultaneously kneeling down to cut the rattles off this giant wiggling snake who would like nothing more than to bite me before it expired. I ended up letting go of the stick just barely while instantly sliding my right hand down a little at a time. I was so spastic, that it never occurred to me to drop my knife for a minute and use two hands. Anyway, once I spazzed my way to the ground, I tried to cut the rattles. They were huge too! But the snake kept wiggling every time I tried to cut. It was really weirding me out. Finally, I was able to cut them. I took the rattles and my knife, and I leaped away leaving the stick and snake behind, knowing that it’s spirit wanted revenge. I put the rattles in my pocket and got ready to leave. Just then, I had a thought. What if I come back through later in the week, and I see this rattlesnake in my path. I will shit my pants! So I decided to move it off of my path. I picked up the stick, and slid it under the now motionless snake. I lifted the snake up into the air and began to walk it off of the path. But all of a sudden, it started wiggling again. That creeped me out, and I dropped the snake. I went back to the path to get my knife and look at my rattles only to find that the rattles had disappeared. That’s right; they were nowhere to be found. They were not in my pocket. They were not with my knife. I looked all around, but they had vanished. All of this was taking its toll on my sphincter, so I simply left. I drove hysterically to my hunting buddy’s house a mile or so away, and I begged him to come and look at the giant killer snake that almost did me in. I knew if he did not come, then nobody would believe just how big the snake was and how lucky I had been to spot it before it got me. He reluctantly agreed to return to the scene of the horrific encounter.

My friend went into the woods with me to see the granddaddy of all serpents. When we came to the ditch, I described step by step what had transpired. He looked at the snake and then laughed and said “Why did you bury its head in the dirt? You shot half of it off!” As he was laughing, he was looking for the rattles, and I’ll be darn if the ole man didn’t find them. He has eyes like an eagle. Well, maybe a really old eagle, but he found those rattles. We counted 11 rattles and a button. A rattlesnake gets a new rattle every time it sheds its skin, so this monster had been slithering around for quite a while. Anyway, I was happy to be alive and happy that I had the rattles as proof of my experience.

The next time I went turkey hunting with Bobby down in south Georgia, we went to a Bar-B-Q joint in the nearest town for lunch on the first day. There was a farmer in there telling us that he killed a rattlesnake that was huge. He said it had 11 rattles, and if it would have bit him, it would have broken his leg! Bobby nudged me and said “Tell him about the snake you killed.” I said “Mine had 11 rattles too, and if I hadn’t have seen it when I did, it would have bit me, robbed me of my keys and stolen my truck.” The farmer said “Bullshiiiiiaaaat. You city boys would shit in your pants if you ever came across a snake like that.” I just looked at him and asked “And your point is?”.

I felt compelled to tell you this story today because, last week, I killed another rattlesnake about a mile from where I had my encounter with the giant demon snake from hell in the aforementioned story. This one was lying out on a dirt road in an astronomy village where I spend a lot of time. That’s right, I said astronomy village….one with observatories, and telescopes, and geeks, and stuff. They don’t let you use any white light at night there because they don’t want to “ruin” their night vision. So I spend most of my evenings there fumbling around trying to find stuff or trying not to pee on my shoes. I just knew that if I let that snake go, then it would not be long before somebody met up with it one night. So, I got out of my truck, and shot it three times. Again the first shot just made it mad, whereas the remaining shots did it in more or less. Just to be sure though, I ran it over with my truck three or four times. It still looked pissed off! So I went to a nearby shed to get a heavy steel rake and a shovel. I whacked it in the head with the steel rake and pierced its snake skull. It put one fang out just hoping that somehow I might spaz out and fall on it, and poison myself to death. Every time I touched its tail with the shovel, it would wiggle, but I still managed to cut off its wiggling rattles with the shovel. There were 7 rattles and a button. All of the astronomers came out of their cabins and homes because it’s against the rules to shoot a gun on the property. I yelled out my apology to the entire community, and I told them that I shot a rattlesnake. They were like “A rattlesnake? No problem. No problem. Did you cut off its head?” I’m like “No, I cut off its rattles. I’m not going near its head.” They suggested that I go back and shoot it some more and then cut off its head. Yeah, right.

Well, I haven’t written in a long time, but I made up for it today. Remember, there are good snakes out there, so don’t go crazy with all this new information I have given you. And don’t go putting any rubber snakes in my mailbox, or in my car, or on my front porch, or other stupid crap like that. I am running low on jockey shorts

Best Wishes,
Dr. JimBob