"RATTLESNAKE RECOLLECTIONS FROM READERS"

MIL'S NOTE: Many interesting reports of snake encounters have come in since "Rattlesnakes" was posted. It is evident, as you can see, and I have known, that my readers are also good writers! I send these replies on to you. Thanks to all... and happy reading!

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So one day I was out hiking in a canyon about 1/2 mile from the house.  I was crawling up a cliff hand-over-hand because it was so steep.  I pulled myself over the edge of a large boulder and was staring face to faces with a nest of rattlesnakes.  I just let go - dropped about 8 feet - but lived to tell the story.

J.B.

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A snake is a snake is a snake is a snake and nothing good comes from them as far as I’m concerned, ESPECIALLY a rattler!  Why did God tell Noah to put two on the ark???? I’ll never understand!

We had a snake come into our living room while living in Spur, TX in 1960.  I had just put my baby boy (about 6 months old) into his playpen in the middle of our living room while I was working in the kitchen.  When I looked into the room to check on him, I saw a huge snake (not a rattlesnake) on the floor between me and my baby.  I gasped loudly enough for the snake to hear me without scaring the baby, and the snake crawled under the furniture.  I grabbed my son from the playpen and ran to the neighbor’s house where I called my husband at work.  He immediately came home, found the snake and removed it from our yard.  It had gotten into the house by coiling up in the Lubbock newspaper delivered to us.  I had picked up the paper in the yard and just put it on a living room chair without unrolling it.  If I had unrolled it and found that snake coiled up inside that newspaper I would not be here today to relate this story to you!!!

J.H.

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Mil...I had a fraternity brother who used to keep a rattler in a box under a  glass lid in his room in the frat house.  Don't know what happened to either one of them, as this was back in 1954-55... 

R.S.

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 My earliest memory in life is of my mother using a garden
hoe to kill a rattlesnake which was curled up in the front
steps of our house in Sweetwater, TX, said to be the
"rattlesnake capitol of the world".  That would have been
about 1936 or '37.

I don't have any other favorite stories although I have
encountered quite a few snakes over the years.  In my youth, living
in Clovis and working on a farm, I killed every rattler I
met, but about fifty years ago I decided they deserved to
live too, unless they were a threat to people which they
seldom are.

E.L.B.

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MIL’S NOTE:

Dear friends of ours moved to Florida 17 years ago.  They have rattlesnakes there, but I asked him to do some COTTONMOUTH stories. The Cottonmouth, so named for showing its gaping white mouth and fangs as a defense strategy, is on the one hand, said to be aggressive, and on the other, a snake that avoids trouble.  Maybe it depends on the situation.

Cottonmouth stories:

A friend of mine was getting a large cooler of beverages and ice from the back of his pickup.  His feet were on the ground and he reached up and grabbed the cooler “macho-like” and lifted it over the back of the pickup.  At that time he noticed a large cottonmouth crawling from under the pickup next to his feet.  The next thing he realized he was standing upright in the back of the pickup holding the cooler.  To this day he can't figure out how he jumped that high holding the cooler.

Then there was the story of a fellow paddling his canoe through a cypress swamp and a cottonmouth dropped from a limb into the bottom of the canoe.  Dutifully he grabbed his shotgun and blasted the cottonmouth.  It was a long wade home pulling the water-filled canoe through the swamp.

There also a fellow wade-fishing in a lake in Florida.  He had quite a large stringer of brim tied to his waist.  He felt something pulling on his stringer and there was a large cottonmouth swallowing the last brim on the stringer.  This also happened to my son fishing on the St Johns river but the stringer was tied to the bank.  He told the snake to have a "nice day".

If I think of any more stories I'll pass them on.

The Ole Fisherman,

R.W.

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   Had several snake experiences---this one scared me most.   In the summer when I was out of out of school,   Dad would send me to his little ranch north of Clovis to "work the fences".  Cattle seem to always rub on the wires and occasionally break a wire or loosen the wires.   Occasionally the staples that were holding the barbed wire to the cedar post would come out and they had to be replaced.   Well, it was my job to walk the fence, splice broken wires and re-staple the wires.   On one section of the fence some of the posts were fairly old and I came upon one that was really crooked and the bottom wire had popped the staple.  So the procedure is that you push the wire up to the post with your left leg, hold it there and bend over and hammer the staple in.  And as I did, I spotted this big rattle snake just inches from my boot, all coiled up in a position to strike.  Needless to say that instantly I was about 15 feet in the air (well it felt like 15 feet).  Scared me to death!!  He did not attempt to strike but I would not have jumped any higher if he had bit my leg off.  I guess the old boy was just cooling off in the shade of that post.   But soon after that, that rattler had a fatal accident---he ran head on into my fence pliers---killed him dead and for the rest of the summer, I paid a little more attention to the shade of those fence posts. 

“Country Boy” Bob