BLADEN JOURNAL (Elizabethtown, N Carolina) 10 June 05 His snake ambivalence only goes so far (Jefferson Weaver)
I must admit to a certain ambivalence about snakes.
I won't swerve the car to run over one sunning its belly on a hot summer road, but I won't endanger myself to avoid doing so, either. I've often wondered how every snake that is killed on the road is poisonous-at least according to the drivers that hit them.
If I run across a snake in the yard, I generally avoid it, and it avoids me. I don't run for the hoe, or grab the nearest firearm. I usually just leave'em alone.
Even though my backyard, also known as Colly Bay, is supposed to be the Snake Capital of the World, there aren't a lot of legless critters around our place. That may be because my cats see snakes as tasty, animated playthings.
When I was a bloodthirsty teenager, I rarely met a snake I wouldn't kill. I even ate several of my innocent victims, since I just had to find out how snake tasted. For once, my beloved mother was hesitant about cooking something I'd brought home.
For the record, snake tastes nothing like chicken. It was more like a mild tunafish, and was downright delightful when battered in cornmeal and fried.
As I grew older, and realized that probably fewer than five out of 100 snakes that we see are actually poisonous (and fewer than that are dangerous) I started ignoring them.
There have been a few, of course, that deserved killin'.
One place where we lived was so rife with pygmy rattlers that I carried a pistol while mowing the grass. While I don't usually spook easily, that place kept me nervous.
Then there was the copperhead that we accidentally ran over with the car. He was so big we thought we'd driven over a tree limb in the road, but then I saw him wiggling toward the woods.
Now, I can't stand to see any animal in pain; even my beloved Miss Rhonda, who hates snakes as only a woman can, didn't want that fat red reptile to suffer. Of course, her compassion only extends so far, since she did lock the doors behind me when I got out to shoot the critter.
Before it was over with, I wondered if my compassion was misplaced.
Three of the five .44 shots I fired at that snake hit behind his head, and all they did was make him even angrier. I slipped back to the car while he contemplated chasing me. The last I saw of that dinosaur, he was slipping into the woods.
Now that, my friends, was a snake.
Then there was the one I couldn't kill, but wanted to, and very badly.
A week before Rhonda and I got married, I ran out of gas on a long country highway. Disgusted with myself, I started walking up a country highway that ran through a swamp. When I stepped to the shoulder to avoid a hog truck, I felt something slap my trouser leg not once but twice.
On the third time, I glanced down and saw a small cottonmouth, his tail firmly trapped under my boot heel in such a way that he couldn't quite twist and hit me with the full force of his fangs. If I stepped off his tail-which I really, really wanted to do-he'd have been able to bite me. As it was, he was little enough that my foot had him trapped.
As I have occasionally done when confronted with untenable situations for which there is no immediately visible and sufficiently dignified solution, I opted for the best course available.
I jumped very high and ran away like a scared little girl.
I discovered later that the snake's fangs had ripped through my pants, but hadn't touched the skin. And yes, I went to church that Sunday.
Of course, running like that made me nearly get hit by a nice couple in an old station wagon. They gave me a ride and their dog gave me fleas, but that's a column for another time. It was not a good day.
Our dog Dan'l Grunt seems to have an affinity for snakes. At least twice in his young life, that idiot coonhound has had to visit the veterinarian after discovering that rattlesnakes can be cranky, especially when one sticks a cold wet nose very close to the snake and barks. No one ever accused Dan'l of having good sense.
For several years we had a snake at Harmony Hall that defied science. He was a big black racer (he was not a cottonmouth moccasin) who used to guard the bridge on the path to the Cape Fear River. He would lift his head eight or ten inches to see who was crossing his bridge, then slide off the side into the canal.
On one particularly busy Sunday afternoon, we either had a monster interloper, or that snake started growing.
He went from five feet (when I saw him that morning) to seven feet (when a couple of tourists hiked to the river an hour later) to even larger.
And still the horror didn't end.
Maybe an hour after the shaken tourists reported a seven-foot snake on the bridge, this miracle of zoology was at least eight or nine feet long, and six inches thick.
He even lifted his head a full two feet from the ground and hissed at his second set of victims.
Said Snake was also somewhat old-fashioned, since I'm pretty sure the young couple giggling, whispering, and walking to the river were more interested in a little romantic privacy rather than the old rice fields.
The mood, however, was ruined, when they reportedly saw a ten-foot snake on the bridge.
A family on the way home from the beach stopped by to visit and let the kids wear off some energy by walking to the river.
They, too, met Snakezilla.
By that point, the snake had grown to incredible proportions, and had dripping fangs. I am not sure but that the snake didn't actually eat one of the children in question.
The next morning, though, the only snake I saw down there was my old friend the black racer. We nodded at each other, and he dropped into the canal for a leisurely swim.
While I don't exactly find them cuddly-and I think many people who have snakes as pets are very, very disturbed-I'm just not a snake-killer.
Of course, that's not much of an issue, since it's illegal to kill many snakes now, unless said snake is threatening bodily harm.
But if one hooks my trouser-leg again, and I have some cornmeal handy, I might have to set aside my ambivalence until after supper.
His snake ambivalence only goes so far