1986 Sunny and the Snake

When Benjamin was just a baby, we were outside in our fence yard one nice day.  Suddenly, Critter started barking at one of the fence poles.  When I went over to investigate, I found several tiny baby rabbits in a little hole by the pole.  But what Critter was barking at wasn’t the little hairless rabbits; it was the huge snake about to grab them.  

I picked B up and took him in the house and into the playpen.  Then I grabbed our 9 mm Smith & Wesson, put on my boots, and went back out.  That snake was not going to eat those rabbits if I had a say.  Besides, I heard it rattle!  I had to kill it, as much as I hated to.  When I went back, the snake was gone (but the rabbits were still there).  I figured now I had an angry snake on my hands.  The snake was nowhere to be seen. 

Smith & Wesson 9 mm

Our trailer sat on the edge of my father-in-law Ben’s alfalfa field.  I knew I would never be able to find that snake out there.  I went back in the house and got my car keys (Shelby).  Then I took the gun and started driving in the direction I thought it would be headed, hanging out the window as I drove.  After a few feet I saw what looked like alfalfa moving so I followed it.  Then I just started shooting in the general area.  I shot as many times as I had bullets (18).  I thought at least if I hadn’t killed it, maybe I had scared it.  Finding a snake in alfalfa is not easy.

Alfalfa field

I drove back to the house and by then I was shaking.  What if that snake had come into the yard?  It could have bitten the dogs, or god forbid, B or me.  What a relief it was gone.

When I was sure the yard was safe, I put Benjamin in his walker in the grass, then took Critter with me to find the snake.  It was pretty easy to see where the incident occurred, the alfalfa was flattened.  And sure enough, I killed it.  Critter found it and dragged it back to the house.  It was pretty big actually.

At that point, I called Trey at the shop and told him what had happened, and that I’d saved us from a huge rattlesnake.  He said that was funny, because apparently Ben had called him because he noticed something was amiss with the alfalfa next to our house.  It looked like it had been trampled by a herd of moose.  Oh dear.

When Trey got home, he didn’t want to look at the snake, he hated snakes, but by then I had realized this was not a rattlesnake, it was a friendly bull snake.  But the word was out.  The story of the alfalfa field attack became legendary among my father-in-law’s cohorts.  I wish I could have seen it, actually, me driving my car through the alfalfa, leaning out the window shooting.

Texas bullsnake

The funniest thing part of this was that the next day, Critter was lying outside the yard under a tree admiring her snake.  Then Sunny, who was perhaps 3 or 4 months old at the time, slyly wiggled his way over to her.  He casually grabbed the snake by the tail and proceeded to drag it away.  Trey and I both were aghast!  You didn’t do that kind of thing to Critter, and Sunny had never been her favorite (she loved Shadow though).  Sunny eventually dragged the snake far enough away and had it laid out in a straight line.  Then he laid down beside it, and from then on, it was Sunny’s snake.  

Never saw anything like it.  He should have been dead.