TheBanyanTree: snake story

[Monique Colver]

Me too. I'm not saying I'm scared of snakes, but okay, I'll just say it out
loud. I am scared of snakes.

When I was living in California, we had more than one instance of
rattlesnakes showing up on our property. Our neighbor up the hill was
building his house, and the resulting commotion unsettled the snakes, and
they'd find our way down to our land.

One night we heard barking outside. We had four Samoyeds then, but they
weren't the barking kind unless something was wrong. Stew rushed out, and
there was a rattlesnake right outside one of the kennel doors -- we left the
kennel doors open usually, and the dogs were free to wander the fenced in
portion of the land. One of the dogs, Jesse, was backed into the corner of
the kennel, and the other three were outside and up on the deck on that side
of the house, barking their fool heads off.

Actually rather smart of them, since they knew we'd respond. I came out
right after Stew, and I panicked, which I'm prone to do. I called out to
Jesse and told her to come to me, and, surprisingly, she did -- she jumped
right over the snake and came up on the deck, and I shoved all four dogs
into the house, where they proceeded to keep barking just in case we hadn't
realized there was a problem yet.

They didn't think much of our abilities to figure things out.

Stew went over to the rattler with a shovel, and he stabbed at it.

By that time the rattler had moved away from the light so Stew was aiming
blindly at it.

He stabbed at it a few more times, or where he thought it was. He knew he'd
gotten it at least once, but since it was dark the snake had managed to
slither away and we couldn't see it.

Eventually we all calmed down and the dogs went back in their kennels, after
sniffing around for the snake. It was gone in the morning, so Stew hadn't
killed it, but maybe it learned its lesson.

Months before that a rattler had appeared in front of the house when no one
was home. When I drove up later I found a rattler in the driveway, cut in
half, a foot from the fence where my precious dogs were. This was rather a
mystery to me, until my home builder came by to dispose of it. He said he'd
come by and heard the dogs barking, and since the yard was effectively in
the front yard, he could see them right there. The rattler had been a foot
or so away from the dogs and they, being stupid dogs, had been barking at
it.

The home builder had chopped the snake in half.

I'm so glad we had a full service home builder. I would have come home alone
to find that one of my dogs had been bitten, or the snake would still be
there and I'd have panicked -- hey, it was in the driveway, maybe I could
have run over it?

It's peaceful up here in Portland. I never see rattlers.

M



On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 4:29 PM, paul <paul at remsset.com> wrote:

> Good story, great pic.  I don't care for things that bite.  Poisonous
> things that bite.... if they appear, I get rid of them.
>
> One night a couple of Summers ago, I went out about dark to close the
> chicken coop.  Got back to the patio and washed off my feet and flip-flops
> w/ the garden hose.  Saw something move so I turned on the porch light.
>  Gah!  A freakin' 3 feet long copper head.  I had a hoe handy and pretty
> much chopped it enough in the middle section that it wasn't going anywhere
> during the night.
>
> Went out the next morning and as expected the snake was dead.  What I
> didn't expect was that it had sank it's fangs into itself.
>
> Pretty snake, but....
>
>
>
> Tom Smith said the following on 6/5/2010 3:10 PM:
>
>  Signs with a coiled snake in a triangle advised CAUTION at all
>> park entrances.  I had walked the trails of this well-used
>> urban natural openspace area hundreds of times without seeing a
>> snake of any kind.
>>
>>  <snip>
>
>
> --
> _____________________________________
>   http://remsset.com
>
>
>   Reality is what doesn't go away just because you don't believe in it.
>                                                       - Jerry Pournelle
>
>


-- 
Monique Colver