The Second Snake

About this time three weeks ago I was dealing with a copperhead that came a-calling. Yesterday evening, Marie was out working in her flower gardens. I was inside reading. She stuck her head in the front door and said, “Snake!”

“Where?”

“Right here by the front steps.”

“Can you tell what kind it is?” By now I was up and heading for the door.

“Black snake, just a small one.”

Black snake: non-venomous, no need for weaponry (AKA shovel). I grabbed my walking stick from beside the front door and headed down the steps. Around the side of the stone enclosure was a black snake all coiled up. I nudged it with the walking stick to get it moving, “No camping here, snake… move along, move along.”

As it unwound I used the stick to direct his head toward the woods, away from the house. It was having none of that and made to go up the steps onto the porch. Marie, standing on the top step watching, took a step back but made no sound: she’s no sissy, that gal of mine!

I redirected it and it attempted to crawl straight up the rock facing. It surprised me how far up it got before falling off. My surprise sprang from two origins: one was the snake’s actual length, at least four feet and it was a couple of inches in diameter at the middle – its dinky head belied the size of its body, but it had probably fed recently on the toads that inhabit the flower gardens around the house. The other was that it could climb a vertical rock face. But they can and do climb trees to get at bird nests, so I guess I should not be surprised by this.

Things took a turn now. When it fell off the rock facing I directed it toward the woods and it took exception, rearing up and coming directly at me quite determinedly. What in the world was this silly snake thinking? I redirected it a little less gently and it turned the opposite direction, again heading for the porch.

I tried several times to hook it with the end of the stick. I kept it off the steps, but could not snag it securely. On the third or fourth time I managed to catch it approximately half way along its body so it was fairly well balanced on the end of my walking stick. That’s what I wanted! I lifted sharply, the end of the stick arcing over my head and the snake got its first flying lesson.

Snakeapult!

It flew about 30 feet to the end of the driveway near the front of the truck, and landed with a fwump. It laid there for a moment, gathering its wits, then crawled off into the brush, defeated.

I’m just going to have to make up a snake stick (length of 1/2” PVC with a long loop of heavy cord run through. Drop the loop at one end of the stick over the snake, pull the loop at the other end to cinch it up tight. Then the snake can be lifted or dragged safely to a release point and let go.)

This tale was originally an e-mail to family. Responses were fairly consistent, but one seems quite representative and well stated:

“I hate snakes. There’s a reason Satan took the form of a snake, and I just don’t trust anything without some sort of protuberance from its body, but I make an exception for earthworms. I would have been screaming like a little girl!”

I’m not nearly as fond of snakes as I once was. When I was young I caught garter snakes as pets, wore the boa constrictor in science class, no fear whatsoever. I found them fascinating. I’m not sure where the change came.

It might have been the time a few of us found a pretty little snake on the school playground, teased it for a bit then because we could not decide who should get to keep the snake we cut it up into pieces, each taking a multicolor banded segment. The teacher caught us looking at our trophies in class, did some investigating and declared that what we were using as a toy was a Coral snake, and had it bitten any of us even once we’d have been dead before we could get back to the school building. This was not entirely true, but it did serve as a wake-up call!

Or it might have been the newspaper article telling about a child who went out on the family home front porch to get the Sunday morning newspaper for her dad, stepped in a nest of baby rattlers that had been birthed there during the night. She died the same day.

Or possibly the stories on TV evening news of water skiers pulled from Lake Casa Blanca, their dead bodies all bloated and swollen with water moccasins still attached to them. I never could figure out why people went water skiing in a lake infested with water moccasins.

All of these things happened in Texas, so I blame/credit the state of Texas for my revised attitude of snakes.

I do recognize that some snakes (perhaps most snakes) are beneficial in the grand scheme of things, but also recognize that the few that are venomous are a threat to the well-being of my family and I discourage them from taking up residence in close proximity to us. This black snake was not poisonous, but I did not want either of us to step out on the porch some morning, and be confronted with it. Or have it try to get into our home. Just the other day my buddy Mike found a Grey Rat Snake in his den; it’s an unnerving situation to say the least! This Black Snake is welcome to prowl the woods around our home, eating bugs, small toads, frogs and even small rattlers, but it is not welcome in our house. I believe it got the message.