Rattlesnake the Revenge -- Continued

Dear Floridians and Others Who Live in Rattlesnake Habitats,

    Phillip, my son-in-law, said that a dead rattlesnake’s mate would come looking for revenge. 

    He said that it was a well known fact that rattlesnakes have mates that come looking for revenge when their husband or wife snake is killed.  They (the snakes) come looking for their husband or wife snake’s bodies so that they can wrap themselves around the dead snake’s corpse to mourn.  Phillip is crazy, and Phillip is from Utah where boy scouts are thicker than thieves and run around telling each other odd stories about wildlife—also they pee on campfires.

    For those who didn’t read last week’s email (shame) here’s the recap.  A rattlesnake was in our garden.  It crawled into our neighbor’s yard.  A man with (almost) no clothes on shot it.

    I laughed at Phillip and pointed at him in derision—a lot.

    The pointing stopped when another rattlesnake coiled, rattling, and sitting next to my pickup truck, a week after the murder of the first rattlesnake, prevented me from controlling my bladder.  My first thought was, “Those crazy boy scouts must be right about rattlesnake loyalty,” and then I ran for a pitchfork.  I also screamed for my oldest son, a combat soldier recently returned from a year’s deployment in a combat zone fighting crazed insurgents. He ran to my aid and then jumped out of his skin when the snake slithered into the bushes.   “That’s a real rattlesnake,” he observed.   I left him standing guard with a pitchfork.

    At school, the girl that sits behind me said that what I really needed was a machete.  A machete is great if you knew where to stand when you hacked the rattlesnake’s head off.  That’s how they do it back in Panama.  Seems that when she and her grandmother go out for their evening walk they carry machetes.  That’s how they do it back in Panama.   

    It sounded like hand to hand combat with rattlesnakes and machetes to me.

    When I got home from school, Aric reported that while he had observed the rattlesnake entering the flower bed he had never observed the snake leaving the flower bed, and besides where was my gun, and did I really expect him to fight the rattlesnake—hand to hand—with a pitchfork?

    Seeing the rattlesnake was way better than not seeing the rattlesnake.

    The news of the snake’s disappearance made my oldest daughter very unhappy, in that her children, my grandchildren, are three and one and fancy themselves nature lovers while at grandma’s house, often tromping about my yard wearing little more than a diaper (kind of like the guy who shot the first snake in the first place.)  She did a little research and then handed me a piece of paper with the words “Snake Dudes” and a phone number written on it.

    She said, “They’re a little pricey.”

    “Why aren’t I surprised.”

    “They charge $100.00 just to come out, then they charge $125.00 per hour to locate all the snakes on your property, and then they sprinkle anti-snake crystals all around your property so the snakes don’t crawl back.”

    “Why aren’t I surprised.  Heather, we have six acres.  I don’t think I can afford the snake dudes.  Besides snake crystals sound pricey.”

    “Then we’ll just have to keep the children inside for the rest of my life.”

    We never saw the rattlesnake again.

     Aric did insist on buying me a shotgun and then insisted on teaching me to shoot it.  I was so intimidated by the silly thing that I was shaking, and Aric had to hold me up when I pulled the trigger.  Don’t worry about me murdering anything; I missed an entire hay bale four times—WITH A SHOTGUN.  Although I did manage to flush some birds out of a bush in the cow pasture behind our place.  I am thinking of getting myself a bedside mattress mount for the shotgun, so I don’t have to even sit up in bed when the rattlesnakes attack.  Except the more I think about that plan the more I can imagine me shooting off my own toes, and besides Aric has hidden the shotgun so well I can’t find it.  

     I must confess though I do enjoy the sound the gun makes when you pull that thingy back to get the shell ready.  Very empowering.  Sigh.  And so it’s come to this.  I’m pretty sure that there is a rattlesnake behind every bush and a creep around every corner.  It can make you grouchy.  Oh well, I’m going to buy one of those people targets from WalMart and practice.  That should cheer me up.

Linda (Pitchfork Perfect) Zern

   

   

   
 

   

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