Snakes

I was afraid of snakes when I was growing up. Until I was ten years old I had never seen a snake other than in a zoo, but they still frightened me. As a teenager I explored the woods and streams in rural Bucks County Pennsylvania. There I came face to face with a few Garter snakes, which are harmless, and several water moccasins and copperheads, which are not. Those encounters were few, but they added to that reptilian fear that most humans seem to carry in them from the day they are born.

As an adult I had only a few non-threatening encounters with this alien species until we bought a home on a mountain lake in Pennsylvania. The path from our house down to the lake was a stone stairway. A stone stairway that took me several years to construct from the many large and small rocks strewn across the property. During the construction, everyone once and a while I would see a snake’s head appear between a few rocks but then the snake would disappear quickly. I convinced myself they were afraid of me. Much later I realized that they were not afraid of me, they just didn't want me to see them until I had finished building their home. My carefully constructed, dry-stacked-stone stairway was a Taj Mahal for snakes.

Each summer at the lake house my fear of snakes would become elevated whenever a six foot long blacksnake decided to sun itself either on our small dock, or on one of the steps I'd built leading to the lake. Each year my trusty, shovel would be called into action and I would cut a few of them in half, or if I was lucky with my panicked swing, I’d manage to cut just the head off.

I knew these snakes were not venomous but whenever a six-foot long snake reared up and surprised me it made no difference, I went for the shovel. A blacksnake when cut in two lives for a long time. Sometimes an hour or two after swinging my dirt-digging guillotine I would find the severed head still able to strike at my foot, while the rear half of the snake was still writhing ten feet away.  

I then got older and moved to rural Virginia. Here I finally seemed to be able to recognize that snakes are not to be feared but understood. Most snakes are what are called “beneficials.” That means they do more good than harm.

The last few years living here in Virginia I have moved large blacksnakes from our porch, pulled both black-snakes and garter snakes from their homes living underneath our greenhouse and our deck, and then gently tossed then into the woods. Each time I handled one that primal fear subsided a little more and I felt I had become a better person. That was until yesterday.

Yesterday I came home from a long cross-country motorcycle ride. As my wife and I were walking by our small greenhouse, something caught her eye. A big blacksnake was coiled up on one of the tables she uses to hold her plants and was looking out the window at her.

This was perfect, after seventeen days of being away from her I had an immediate chance to be a hero to my wife. I thought of grabbing the snake with my hands to earn even higher “hero” points but I quickly could tell the snake wanted no part of that plan.

A small three-tined garden rake with a six-foot handle was the perfect instrument to move the coiled snake over into the woods.

The snake cooperated for the first twenty feet but then it decided to slither off the rake and it fell to the ground. “No problem I’ll just lift it up again and move it over into the woods,” I thought. That was my plan. The snake had a different one.

As I approached it on the ground the six-foot long critter decided it wanted no part of me. It had decided to fight back. It took less than an instant for my desire to live peacefully with all God’s creatures to be replaced by my primal fear of snakes.

The rake in my hand accelerated quickly and the three tines pierced the snake about two feet back from its head. In fear, I had swung the rake so violently that when it hit the ground the tined head almost separated from the handle as the wood splintered. Remember for a moment that I used the term “almost separated.”

The poor creature was writhing with the three tines imbedded in its back and I quickly felt guilty. “Stupid” I said to myself. “Stupid. It can’t hurt you it’s just a blacksnake. Longer than I am tall, but still just a balcksnake.”

I carried it into the woods and flung it off of the rake’s tines into the brush. Within seconds a hundred flies were buzzing around the injured snake. Where they came from I have no idea but it was obvious that they somehow sensed a dying animal.

A few minutes later my guilt was really high, and I decided I needed to help the snake by killing it outright instead of leaving it to die a slow death tortured by flies.  

Going back into the woods with a three-tined rake with a broken handle and looking for an injured snake was to prove to be one of my more stupid moves.

The blacksnake saw me a little before I saw it and it was not happy. When it came towards me I instinctively swung my almost-broken-handled rake down on its head.

The physics of what followed has me baffled but the head of the rake with its three tines that had pierced the snake came flying back toward me and hit me squarely in the face about an inch below my eye. Luckily just one tine punctured the skin. One tine of a rusty rake covered in snake guts. the slime from the snakes innards mixed with the blood on my hand.

Getting older makes you more philosophical. You look for the lesson, or the meaning in everything that happens. Last night with my face tingling I woke up several times telling myself that I should not have killed that snake.

That virtuous plan did not last through my coffee this morning. My face tingling and with my cheek starting to puff up a little I walked out the back door and down the back walk.

The black hose across the sidewalk didn’t really catch my eye until it moved. My desire to live in harmony with nature ended with a shovel swing that severed the second snake’s head. An hour later I took a trip to the doctor for a tetanus shot and antibiotics.  

There’s a reason for our primal fear of snakes. I for one don’t plan to try to counter it anymore.