AMERICAN-STATESMAN (Austin, Texas) 07 October 07 A snake in the doorway is worse than two in the bush (Mike Leggett)
Burnet County: Saved by lo mein.
That's what I'll always believe, that I was protected from a rattlesnake bite by a carryout box of combination lo mein noodles, zucchini and meat in brown sauce.
After I got out of the truck, home from greeting our son's new baby boy, I couldn't get to my house key with one hand, and I was holding the Styrofoam box in the other, so I turned to Rana and asked if she'd take the food container while I found the right key to the front door. Shoving the loaded key ring up under my nose, I found the silver key in the moonlight and took the first of the two strides left between me and the door.
The snake's strong rattle — inside the acoustically perfect concrete and stone alcove surrounding the front door — came from everywhere at once, coarse, loud, a buzz from hell. The snake could be anywhere, behind, in front, to the side. We both jumped, a useless and even dangerous response because in the dark it could have dumped us right on top of the snake. This time it didn't.
"Oh, Dad, it's a rattlesnake," Rana said on her way to the truck. My ears have been ravaged by too many shotguns, and I wasn't so sure, though the noise was hard to ignore.
"It could have been a cicada," I said, reaching under the truck seat for my big flashlight. I raked the porch with the beam of light and it fell upon a western diamondback, coiled right in the middle of Rana's Halloween pumpkin door mat.
In case there had been any further mistaken identity, any thought that this wasn't a rattler on our front porch, the snake buzzed again to reinforce his previous warning: stay away.
Things happen to me that don't happen to other people, partly because of the life I live — tromping around in the brush, living in the country with a barely controlled, xeriscaped lawn and garden, feeding birds and rats and 'coons — and partly because God sort of has it in for me.
How else would YOU explain the Jehovah's Witness tracts that fell out of the front door and into the foyer once the snake was removed and the door opened inside? "Who is Satan?" read one of the headlines. And Satan once appeared as a serpent. Coincidence? You decide.
I was faced with the job of getting this particular snake, most likely trapped on the porch by my wife's cats and agitated beyond all reason, away from the porch without getting bitten. In the dark.
My snake stick — a hoe handle with part of the neck of the blade still attached — that I use to move prickly pear and snakes out of the way when I'm walking in the brush was right next to the door, right next to the rattlesnake and out of reach. I kept the light on the snake and moved up closer to keep him on the porch while Rana ran to a side door to grab my video camera.
The snake kept up fairly consistent buzzing, especially if I got closer than six feet. I needed him to stay on the porch so I could take pictures and also so he didn't escape into the yard to hide in the cedars or crawl through the fence into the backyard with the dogs like one of his cousins did last year.
Finally abandoning the door mat for a spot under a deer skull that's part of an arrowhead-on-stone decoration on the porch, the snake coiled up in a good defensive position and gave me room to reach past him to my stick. Rana came back with the camera but refused to get close enough to hold the flashlight while I took pictures of the snake, a solid 3-footer with enough zip to hurt a human or a pet.
"I really hate to kill him," Rana said. "He was just being a snake and he tried to warn you." I agreed, but there's just no room for a rattlesnake close to the house. Especially not when they are in full feeding mode, getting ready for cold weather. Right now, they're moving more, generally heading back toward rock crevices and caves where they'll escape true cold in the winter.
I could try to capture this snake in the dark, but then I'd have to move it to a neighbor's yard or carry it far enough away that it wouldn't be a problem. We had kids and grandkids and dogs in the neighborhood, and although the snakes are there all the time, they keep their distance out in the brush, and we don't bother them when we see them crawling across a road.
I felt bad, though, I still do. That snake didn't want to bite me. But he would have. One more step, and as agitated as he was, he would have let me have it. It would have been completely justified, totally defensive, and I wouldn't have been mad about it. It's just the way snakes work. But I couldn't leave him there to bite one of our grandkids, either.
Unfortunately, after the pictures were taken, this snake had to go. I slowed him down a little with the snake stick, then picked him up and dropped him into a plastic garbage bag. He's in the freezer now where he'll stay until someone needs a hat band or a belt.

http://www.statesman.com/sports/content/sports/stories/other/10/07/1007legcol.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=54

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