My dad has been anxious for me to write about our family and the snakes
we have
known, however briefly. “There was that one water moccasin at the house
on
Latexo, coiled up under the fence, half on one side, half on the other.
I just
sliced right through him with the shovel, like cutting through the
rings of a
cinnamon roll,” Dad would say, in an attempt to inspire my enthusiasm
for the
subject. I cringed at exposing our family’s long-running persecution of
snakes
to the world. “Okay, you could write about Sam,” he’d say. Sam. Don’t get my parents started on that dog. My sister and I never
had to
argue about who was my parents’ favorite child; we knew it was the one
with all
the looks and the brains, the three-legged Spitz-Border Collie mix who
came
into the family long before we were born – Sam. Mom thinks I should
write a
book about Sam. “What about That Quail Robert? If they can write
a book
about a quail, you can write a book about Sam,” she says.
Sam was multifaceted. He played hide-and-seek, although my parents
stop short
of endowing him with the ability to actually count out loud. Sam sang
along
with the Hamm’s beer commercials. Sam could hear the ice cream truck
from miles
away and would run back and forth from the house to the street, barking
his
special ice cream bark, until my mom would bring out a dime and buy him
an
Eskimo pie (which he selected by pointing to the picture on the side of
the
truck, I suppose). “And he would eat the whole thing and not lose a
drop,” my
mom says, somewhat accusatorily.
Sam also had a special snake bark. My mom would call my dad at work
a few
blocks away and tell him, “Sam’s found a snake in the backyard.”
“Did you see it?” my dad would ask.
“I don’t have to. Sam’s using his snake bark.”
Dad would come home and, sure enough, there would be another water
moccasin in
our back yard, fleeing the bulldozers in the new development behind our
house.
That snake should’ve taken his chances with the earth movers rather
than face
my dad… and Sam. If my dad wasn’t slicing up snakes like breakfast
rolls, Sam
was slinging copperheads and moccasins around like rawhide toys. He’d
snap the
snake in half before it had a chance to breath a sigh of relief after
having
escaped the bulldozer, much less strike, then give it a good death
shake for
theatrical measure, sending pieces flying around the yard, up on the
roof, and
once, flinging the head of one unfortunate copperhead through the
garage door
and whamp! right into my mom’s leg. My mom swears her leg hurt for
days.
As much as my family seemed to hate poisonous snakes, you would think
we would
have moved from Houston to Oregon or one of those other paradise states
that
has no venomous serpents. Instead, we headed to the Texas Coast, where
all four
of the state’s most odious snakes live in abundance: coral snakes,
copperheads,
water moccasins, and – to a lesser degree – rattlers. Once we’d cleared
that
area of any threat to the rat population, it was time to move on to a
150-acre
spread outside Bellville, Texas.
Bellville calls itself “the bluebonnet capital.” Nonsense. It’s the
“water
moccasin capital” and I think my dad knew that when we moved. Although
we had
our share of coral snakes and copperheads – I remember jumping over
more than a
few copperheads as they basked on the sidewalk or on the drive way, and
I think
Dad beheaded a thirtysomething-inch coral snake out by the well – it
was the
moccasins we did battle with. I remember one swimming furiously towards
me and
my horse one day while we wallowed in our pond. I couldn’t get my hot
horse to
budge until he caught sight of that snake and, I swear, screamed and
flew out
of the water like a cartoon horse.
These days my dad doesn’t even use a shovel or hoe to eradicate the
demons; he
stomps them to death, protected by his rubber boots. This might paint a
rather
violent picture of my dad, a very sweet man who doesn’t hunt or fish
and goes
green at the sight of blood. Any blood, that is, except snake blood. “A
man’s
got a right to protect his home,” he says.
Not everyone feels this way about snakes. I volunteered for a rather
shaky dog
rescue group that houses a zillion unfortunate hounds out on a spooky
ranch
around Manor. I would go out once a week to
feed the poor,
overcrowded
wretches,
wondering the whole time if this group of doggie saviors
didn’t
need to be turned in for unintentional animal abuse. It was bleak.
One pen was only accessible through a half-completed, dilapidated
house. As I
approached the pen, I noticed a couple of dogs were not their usual
neurotic,
hyperactive selves and they had swollen body parts. Uh-oh.
It was difficult to see in the twilight, there was no electricity,
and my
flashlight was rather dim when I entered the scary house through the
narrow
passageway, past pieces of insulation that flapped against my legs and
shreds
of tar paper that hung down from the rafters to brush my face. When I
entered
the main room, there was just enough light filtering through the cracks
in the
boarded up windows to make out a huge rattlesnake. He seemed lethargic
from the
cold (or else he was exhausted from biting several dogs, as it turned
out) and
only gave me the slightest warning rattle before he slithered into the
corner
right by the only door out to the pens. The dogs were in trouble and a
Western
rattlesnake blocked my path. So, what did I do? I drove up to the
Texaco on
Highway 290 and found a couple of good old boys cum rattlesnake
hunters
to come back with me and stalk through that dark house and capture that
huge
snake with a tiny stick with a noose on it. Although they took the
snake alive,
I was pretty sure the brightest future he could hope for was as a hat
band or
boot toe.
The rest of the night was a blur of hauling snake-bitten, angry dogs
to the
vet, where I was met by the leader of the rescue group, who chastised
me for
not making certain the snake would be released in a nice, rat-infested
field or
state park. I left with a worse taste in my mouth for the animal
rescuers than
I did for that old rattler.
But my story pales compared to my sister’s snake tale, which verges
on the
mythic, the folkloric, the legendary. She was driving home to her place
out
past Oak Hill late one night, and she saw a rattlesnake tearing down
the road
with a rabbit in hot pursuit. She could hardly believe it, and neither
could
the rest of us when she told us about it. “This rabbit would spring
forward and
try to smash the snake with its front legs,” she said. We all shook our
heads
and worried about her.
The next day, her husband killed a rattlesnake on their front
porch.
Decapitated the thing. When he picked it up by the tail, three little
bunnies
slid out. My sister was vindicated and we were forced to tear up the
commitment
papers.
Snakes do make people
behave crazily, though. My dog, Domino, was bitten on the nose by a
rattler
when my insanely paranoid boyfriend Dexter and I took a roadside break
on our
way across West Texas. By the time we reached Van Horn, her
grapefruit-sized
head had swelled to watermelon proportions. I ran into the medical
clinic for
people with the wheezing pooch in my arms. They threw me out post-haste
and
directed me towards the nearest vet – 90 miles away in Marfa.
The dog survived, but my crazy boyfriend almost didn’t. We had to
leave Domino
at the vet’s overnight, and as we were about to leave the parking lot,
Dexter
swore he saw somebody load her into his pickup truck to steal her. We
chased
this truck all over Marfa until it pulled up at a house with a party of
rough-looking gentlemen drinking on the front lawn. Dexter jumped out
of the
car and started searching through this fellow’s truck and accusing him
of
stealing a snake-bitten, runty Australian Shepherd. I think the
gentlemen were
so stunned by Dexter’s apparent insanity that they didn’t have the
heart to
beat the crap out of him. Once again, the snake wasn’t my least
favorite
character in the drama.
But none of these encounters were enough to pique my interesting in
writing
about snakes. It would take one more pivotal snake rendezvous before I
was
ready to purge these horrid tales from my soul.
About a month ago, I had just finished listening to a radio broadcast
about
most memorable sounds, things like bacon sizzling and fog horns and
sweet stuff
like that. I was thinking how I didn’t have a most memorable sound and
I was,
honestly, feeling a little sorry for myself. The dogs were yapping at
something
outside and I walked barefoot out the back door to scold them. It was
dark.
They were in the bushes a few feet away harassing something. During a
sudden
lull in their barking, I heard it. My memorable sound.
Shgrrrrrr. Like a
bunch of tiny maracas. I screamed at the dogs so loud my tonsils shot
out my
mouth and the dogs were so startled they actually obeyed me and ran
into the
house. Then I started screaming for my husband Richard. He came running
with a
flashlight and carefully, carefully shone it into the bushes. “Oh, my
god,” we
said in unison. He was a big one, with a head the size of my fist,
coiled in
the strike position, and extremely agitated. But no more so than me.
“What do we do? What do we do?” I wailed, hopping from one foot to
the other.
“You hold the flashlight on him,” Richard said. “We have to kill it
this close
to the house.”
“Kill it? Kill it!?! We’ve never killed anything!” My voice is about
eight
octaves higher than its normal chipmunk level.
“Hold the flashlight. I’ll get the .22.”
Now this is actually pretty funny, because he said it like he was
carefully
choosing the proper weapon from our arsenal when all we have is a .22,
for
which Richard had just gotten bullets a week earlier, after having it
sit in
the back of the closet unused for 15 years. The great white hunter ran
in the
house to lock and load, while the quivering heap of jelly tried to hold
the
flashlight still on those hypnotic green eyes in the bushes. Richard
ran back
out, took aim… and I came absolutely unglued for the first time in 20
years.
Weeping, sobbing, shaking. He fired. Right between the eyes. The great
snake
writhed in the dirt.
“Shoot him again,” I sobbed. Pop. The snake was still. I let out a
wail of
anguish.
“What’s wrong with you?” Richard asked calmly. “Do you feel bad for
the snake?
I do, too. But what else could we do?”
Richard actually skinned the snake, but stopped short of eating it.
“Just
wasn’t
hungry,” he says. The skin is now tacked to a post in the
barn and
when I look at it,
even after a couple of months has passed, my
blood runs
cold, the cold blood of a snake-killer.
This article appears in April 28 • 1995 and April 28 • 1995 (Cover).