Snakes

Snakes were a part of our life on the farm, yet none of us every got bit by one.

I remember a black colored snake that use to always run across the road in front of me when I was going to the field. The tractor would go 13 MPH at top speed but I never got close to that snake and never saw it unless I was on the tractor.

There was the water moccasin that stalked us one night while we were fishing. It must have been a moon lite night for I watched it for a long time. At first, it looked like a stick coming toward us a few feet from the bank. The thing was, we were upstream from it and I knew enough to know that sticks don't float upstream.

I never climbed up in the old tree hanging out over the river that caused the deep swimming hole to form but many other boys did. They would wade through the water and tree limbs to get to a good place to jump off. They often mentioned feeling something brush against their legs and chalked it off to tree limbs. Later, someone decided to cut out some of the limbs (which ruined the swimming hole) to get a better place to jump. The story is that they flushed out a bed of snakes from the tree.

Once in our old house, the television sat with the back to the window so the antenna wire could go out easily. At times, we had to reach behind and shake the wire to get reception cleared up. One day I started to reach back there and for some reason on this day I looked first. Usually, we just reached back and watched the television to see when it cleared up. Today though I looked and there was a rattle snake plastered to the back of the television.

I don't much like snakes. I saw a man catch a copper head once but I refused to take it when he offered it to me. I hope I didn't hurt his feelings.