DECATUR DAILY (Alabama) 28 June 05 'My heart skipped a beat' - Rattler makes for cautious summer at Oden Ridge (Ronnie Thomas)
Oden Ridge: This is the first summer Fred and Deborah Childs are allowing their 5-year-old daughter, Katelyn, and her 4-year-old brother, Isaac, to play alone in their front yard off Eva Road.
And if not for the alertness of the girl, a recent outing in Southeast Morgan County could have ended tragically.
Katelyn, who just finished first-year kindergarten at Sparkman School, said she and Isaac were playing when she hit a ball across the driveway that divides the yard.
When she went to retrieve it, a redbird sitting in the fresh-cut grass caught her eye. She stopped to admire it. At almost the same instant, she saw a rattlesnake slithering toward her.
She screamed at Isaac to follow her, that there was a snake in the yard. She started running toward the house. But she turned to notice her little brother standing near the driveway, trying to see the snake. She ran back, took him by the hand and led him to the house.
She told their brother, Rodney, 16, who will be a junior at Brewer High School. He grabbed a .410-gauge shotgun and stopped the snake in its track.
"It was a 4-foot-long black velvet rattler," Fred Childs said of the reptile, also called a timber rattlesnake.
"A neighbor, Tommy Shelton, told me that that particular species is aggressive and will 'not wait for you in the shade, but will come after you.'
"God had to be watching over (Katelyn and Isaac). Rodney said, 'Daddy, my heart nearly skipped a beat when I saw how large it was.' "
Deborah Childs is usually seated on the front porch watching the children play. Should she go inside, she reminds them not to leave the yard.
She leaves the front door open for any unusual sounds.
But Thursday, when the snake came calling, she had driven to Hartselle to assist her disabled mother. Her husband was on his job in maintenance at Metco Steel Reels in Hartselle.
"When Mother needs something and calls, I just pick up and go," she said. "Of course, Rodney was here, and he's very responsible. He, too, leaves the door open when the children are outside. And their baby sitter, Ann Shelton, lives nearby."
Fred Childs cautions parents to be alert to the danger that might be lurking in their yards.
Although Childs' home is in a wooded area, he said he has never known of a snake coming so close to the house.
"But you never know. I believe that snake might have been coming for water," he said, "in our kids' small plastic pool."
Rattler makes for cautious summer at Oden Ridge