Why is it that rattlesnakes always seem to cross a road perpendicularly? The many that I have driven up on always seem to be a curiously long stick lying partway across the road, perfectly perpendicular. Almost always at night, the closer I get the more they become part of a mirage that disappears. The stick that one moment was in my lane has somehow slid a few feet over into the opposing one. In that brief moment my mind registers: “Rattlesnake!” During the fall and spring, after a sunny warm day and as the night has started cooling the air, the cold blooded rattlesnakes come out of the grass to seek the heat that is being held by the paved roads. There they lay looking like a stick in your path.
This is how it was an evening in October 1989. The summer had held on longer than normal and the rattlesnakes had yet to den up. I was out on a coyote hunt with my best friend Mark Kohler and his Dad, Lawrence. We had just left a farm near Coupland, TX, home of cotton farmers and the famous Coupland Inn and Dance Hall. Driving in my old Chevy pickup, Mark was riding shotgun and his Dad was crammed into the half-sized back seat. Q-Beam spotlights were jammed between our legs with the cords running out the windows to a direct connection on the battery. Both Mark and I had our favorite coyote rifle within easy reach, barrels pointing down into the floor, the stocks bumping our elbows in the crowded cab.
We turned off of the paved road and onto a gravel county road as the lights lit up an annoying stick in our way. Simultaneously Mark and I shouted “Rattlesnake!” as a three-footer slid across the road to the right and started to disappear into the grass. I yanked the wheel hard to the right taking my truck into the bar ditch and slammed on the brakes in attempt to pin the snake under my left front tire. Coming to a sliding stop, with Mark's Dad hanging on to keep from coming over the seat and ending up impaled on the stick shift, the chalk dust from the gravel road enveloped the truck for a few moments.
Throwing open my door, a spotlight cord wrapped around my left foot, I jumped out. With its cord ripped from the socket, the spotlight clanged as it bounced across the floor of the truck and hit the gravel useless. All I could hear was the buzzing of a really angry rattler. One thing I learned that night. Mark hates rattlesnakes. Mark’s Dad REALLY hates rattlesnakes.
With my flashlight in my hands I could see we had the snake pinned between the tire and a thick bed of grass just off the gravel. The rear six inches of this snake was pointing toward the road, the rattle at the tip buzzing. The other thirty inches of fanged madness was repeatedly throwing itself at the tire, its mouth wide open, striking at the monster that had it pinned to the ground. Mark was behind me. Mark’s Dad was WAY behind me. All the while the snake was fiercely rattling his tail letting out a buzz like two hot wires in a high voltage short. I don’t know how the snake managed it, but he quickly squirmed his way out from under the 5000 lb truck. He was about to get away. Umm…I don’t think so. I wasn’t quite done playing with him.
And I reiterate, Mark was safely behind me with his Dad still WAY behind me.
As I saw the tail just break free, I did the only thing any sane person would do: I reached down and grabbed a fistful of angry rattles and quickly tossed the rattlesnake back to the center of the road.
Here is where it got REAL exciting. Mark had exited his position of safety directly behind me and had come to the front of the truck, out of my line of sight, to get a better look.
Who needs enemies when your best friend hits you in the chest with three feet of angry rattlesnake?
In slow motion it seems, I expertly flicked the snake out from under the truck. Like a squirming boomerang it flew through the air rotating two and a half times before hitting Mark square in the chest. I really didn’t know Mark could move that fast. With flailing hands and high stepping boots, he could have done the 40-yard dash in 4.5 seconds, in reverse. I guess he thought harsh language would kill it or something because for the next thirty seconds or so it streamed out of Mark’s mouth. Now that I look back on it, I’m not sure if it was aimed at the snake or me. I’m guessing it was aimed at me. Shaken and thinking we had had enough fun for the night, we killed the snake, packed up the broken spotlight, and headed to the house.
During the one-hour trip back to the house, the only thing I remember Mark’s Dad saying was, “Kendall, I can’t believe you threw a live rattlesnake at my Son.” I’m pretty sure he repeated this several times. Even though he was grown up and married, Mark’s Mother had forbade him from doing anything with me for the next six months. This sweet lady, my second Mom, had given me the dreaded stink-eye. She made it painfully clear. I would not be putting her son in any sort of imminent danger ever again.
These days I’m not as foolhardy as I was back then. Sitting in front of the TV with my kids, watching Jeff Corwin on Animal Plant, I grew an appreciation for all things snake and now tend to let them hang around as part of the local ecology. Now I let the stick slide on across the road. If its in my yard, I carefully urge it into a container and move it far enough away that I won’t have to worry about seeing it in my yard again.
No more throwing snakes for me. Besides, I would hate to hear the string of foul language from Mark repeated and definitely do not ever want to see that stink-eye from his Mother again.
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