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.

1989 Sunny on the Tracks

When he was about 3 years old, my son Benjamin had a Wolfhound named Sunny.  I had an adult named Shadow, and I had decided Benjamin needed his own puppy.  He loved Sunny, they went roaming around together.  We lived in a trailer house on my in-laws' land and there was plenty of space.  We had a fenced yard as well, where the dogs could stay.  But sometimes we liked to let them out and take them "out back" where the land dropped down to fields and then the Pease River.

Smith Hill

Not too far away from our trailer was the railroad track.  The trains went by pretty regularly.One day, I went outside and didn't see the three dogs, Sunny, Shadow, and our white German Shepherd, Critter.  Then I found a hole dug under the fence.  I started running up our towards the track and the street because that was I feared the most.  As I did, I saw Shadow and Critter come running towards me.  Critter kept going to the house, but Shadow was visibly upset.  I went with him up the embankment to where the train track was, and then I saw him, a pile of fur a little way down the track.  He didn't appear to be moving.

I ran all the way back to the house to get my car, which was a little Dodge Colt Premier Turbo.  I put Critter and Shadow in the yard and grabbed a couple of blankets.  Then I called our vet, Dr. Roger Lacy, and told them I was coming, and took off to the track.
When I got there, I left the back door of the car open.

Then I climbed up the embankment to where Sunny was lying.  He wasn't moving, but he seemed to be breathing.  He had a long singe mark all the way down his side from his shoulder to his flank.  I wasn't sure what to do, what if he had a broken back?  But I couldn't leave him lying on the track, knowing more trains would be coming.  I spread out one of the blankets and dragged him onto it.  He made some movements, so I know it must have hurt, but he didn't try to bite me.  After I got him on the blanket, I managed to get him down the embankment to the car.  He weighed about 80 lbs, I would imagine.  Somehow I got him onto the back seat, shut the door and took off to the vet.

Lacy Vet Clnic

When I got there, they took him in and told me to wait.  It was a long wait.  When Dr Lacy came out to get me, he told me Sunny was lucky that he was still alive.  He didn't appear to have any broken bones, but, he had a severe concussion and his responses were not good.  Roger thought he might have been hit a glancing blow on the head and landed between the 2 rails.  That would account for the singeing of his coat, from the heat of the metal wheels going by him.  It was close to a miracle that he actually only had the concussion.

Sunny stayed at the vet for about a week.  When he came home, he was subdued and lethargic.  I didn't think he would ever be back to normal.  But he remembered Benjamin, and Benjamin remembered him.  That was the important thing.  Shadow was extremely protective of him, but Critter never had liked him since he stole a snake from her as a puppy.

Sunny recovered to be almost completely his old self.  He retained the singe marks down his side for a couple of months, but otherwise, he was okay.  Dr. Lacy later told me "I wouldn't have given that dog a 30% chance of surviving, much less being back to normal".

I was just grateful I found him so quickly.  If he had been there when another train came by, we would not have been so fortunate.