SUN JOURNAL (Lewiston, Maine) 13 August 07 The one that got away
After reading about the ball python that dropped in last month for an unexpected shower with a Lewiston resident, it rekindled memories of my encounters with snakes.
Whenever I see a snake while mowing the yard or working in the garden, it always triggers what I call "rattlesnake complex." My eyes will spot a two-foot-long garter snake, but my brain registers rattler, and away my feet take me until reason hits.
That complex started when my siblings and I used to pick jojoba beans as kids in the Arizona desert of Apache Junction and sold them by the pound for cash.
At that time during the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a shortage of bean pickers, probably because jojoba bushes provided shady relief for rattlers of all sizes and varieties, but mostly diamondbacks.
Once we gained this knowledge after more than a few too-close-encounters-of-the-scary-kind, we'd pepper a bush with rocks to flush out the rattlers. Then, while armed with a big stick to ward off stragglers, we'd get the beans, many of which would be on the sand after the rock fusillade.
Later, when we learned there was a growing market for rattlesnake skin, heads, venom and rattles, we knew right where to find them.
I have yet to be fanged by a rattler, but I've come darn close while hiking and backpacking in Apache Junction's infamous Superstition Mountains, on the Mogollon Rim near Payson, and along the Arizona-Mexico border while prospecting for wulfenite mines with a college geology club.
But the mother of all snake encounters in my lifetime involved a backcountry fishing trip with my brothers Jeff, Larry and Scott.
One night, after getting about three hours of sleep, we decided to drive to our favorite rainbow trout fishing spot in Big Lake, located 9,000 feet up in the White Mountains of northeastern Arizona.
Bleary eyed and still struggling to come to terms with coffee from a Circle K convenience store, Larry was driving through woods above Payson listening to the radio when, to our horror, the high beams picked up a log across the road.
He hit the brakes and we all braced for impact, pointing and screaming in unison, "Log!"
The car squealed to a stop beyond the log, which didn't provide the totally-out-of-control-crash we'd anticipated. Mystified, we got out and backtracked the skid marks with flashlights to the "log."
It stretched from woods on one side of the road into woods on the opposite side and looked remarkably like a western diamondback, Arizona's only rattler that can exceed seven feet in length.
Scant seconds later, realization hit - the "log" was moving.
"Snake!" everyone yelled when terror and adrenaline walloped us. We ran screaming back to the car, piled in and locked the doors, gasping for breath.
Then, dollar signs popped into our heads, but, none of us wanted to get out to capture the monster. So, Larry drove back and forth over it trying to kill it.
I can't recall if we all got out to get what we naively thought was a dead snake, or if it was just one of us, but the snake was still very much alive and slithering across the road.
Then, we heard its rattles. It was a very loud angry sound in the dark. En masse, we decided discretion was the better part of stupidity and drove on, no longer needing that stiff jolt of caffeine from now spilled coffee.
We caught some good-sized fish that day, but "the one that got away" was the talk of the family for quite a while.
The one that got away

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