The Only Good Snake

“The only good snake is a dead snake.” This was a commonly held belief when I was young and still holds true for many people. This is especially true of rattlesnakes.

On one of our recent evening drives, Donna, Sage (her dog), and I spotted a dead rattlesnake along a rural road. It was only a hundred yards from a farmhouse. Donna remarked, “That’s way too close for comfort for the landowner.” She had grown up on a farm, and she has no ill will toward rattlers. “But, when I was young,” she said, “we had a couple get within 50 yards of our house. Dad had to kill them for safety’s sake.”

The dead rattlesnake we saw on the road turned out to be 30 inches long and had six rattles and a button, according to another person we saw driving along the road and who removed the snake from the road.

In one of his “Gone for the Day” articles, artist-naturalist-sportsman Ned Smith tells a humorous story about a rattlesnake. He and a friend had been hunting them for a collector who needed some. (They couldn’t do this under today’s rules.) They had captured one rattlesnake and had carried it back to their vehicle in a burlap sack. Upon arriving at the parking lot, they dumped the snake from the bag onto the ground to then place it in a dry bag. A fisherman was standing in the parking lot where Smith and his partner were effecting the change. When the fisherman saw the snake slithering along, he raced to his car, jumped in, rolled up his windows, and locked his doors.

I have nothing against rattlesnakes but am grateful I do not encounter many when outdoors. I have had a couple close calls. One fall when scouting for turkeys, I was ready to plop down on a flat rock for a rest. Fortunately, I spotted the head of a rattlesnake peering out from underneath the rock. I didn’t sit down till I arrived at my truck.

Another time I had finished an evening’s fishing on the BFO River and was hiking back to my truck, wearing sneakers for the hike, carrying my waders over my shoulder. My flashlight’s beam was dull and didn’t illuminate the rattlesnake on the path till I was only one step from it. After a brief stalemate, the snake slithered into some weeds and headed toward the river. Every stick on the path looked like a rattlesnake during the rest of the 30-minute hike to my truck.