(JD Rhynes is a longtime member and founder of the California Bluegrass Association, one of the CBA columnists, and writes a CBA column on good down home cooking. This is a comment I posted about one of his columns describing his "love" (not) of rattlesnakes. JD is bigger than life in person and in his writing.)
Since JD got us on the subject of rattlesnakes, I’ve got a couple of East coast rattler stories that he might find amusing.
Back in the southeast we have two basic rattlers….the eastern diamondback…which can truly grow into a monstrous sized snake…and the smaller, but prettier, timber rattler. Thankfully I’ve never had a run-in with a diamondback…but have run across a fair share of timber rattlers.
My 3 brothers and I were out hiking down an old forest service road in north Georgia one spring when we came across this nice 4-foot long timber rattler that had just shed its skin. Since it was a cool day, and having just worked hard to shed, the snake was a little sluggish and just lay there in the middle of the road, warming up in the sun, ignoring us….even when poked with a stick. I can still remember the skin on that snake looked like velvet in the sunlight and you could see all the hues of black, grey and brown in the pattern on its back…it was one of the prettiest snakes I’ve ever seen in the wild.
Unfortunately for the snake, he was about 10 feet from our next campsite and it also had the misfortune to be alone in the presence of 4 unmonitored, overly-testosteroned young teenage boys…a bad combination for all concerned. My next to youngest brother, Robin, decided he wanted the rattles and besides we didn’t like the idea of camping that close to a venomous snake (think teenage boys, sleeping bags, and stories of snakes crawling in) so we decided to dispatch the reptile. Now we weren’t carrying any firearms but we did have my hunting knife and since there were no volunteers to try and grab the snake, we decided to tie my knife to a pole and cut the head off. This didn’t work so well because I hadn’t sharpened my knife in awhile and we had some difficulty cutting the head because the knife kept slipping off the pole. By this time, the poor snake finally figured out the benefits of self-preservation and slithered off into the laurel…with my brother Robin headfirst in hot pursuit.
In the southern Appalachian mountains we have something called “laurel hells”, which are very large patches of thick mountain laurel, azaleas, and other low growing brush, that have to be negotiated on all fours or on your belly. These laurel hells are pretty impenetrable, dark, and the ground covered in a thick carpet of wet leaves making it slippery and easy for snake concealment. But Robin was not to be deterred and besides he is the crazy demented brother, relatively speaking. About the time he realized he was catching up with the snake….and the snake figured someone was in pursuit…I grabbed the back of his belt and hoisted him back out onto the road. Robin of course thought my action was unwarranted and over-cautious…..no one has ever accused Robin of being the brightest bulb in the pack. Evidently we had mortally wounded the snake and were able to fish it out with a stick back onto the road where we promptly finished it off with a large rock dropped repeatedly on its head. I think Robin still has the rattles and I still feel a little guilty for unnecessarily killing that snake and not doing it quickly. I’ve killed plenty of copperheads around my parents house in North Carolina, without regret, but this timber rattler was something to behold and we could have just walked down the road a bit and found another campsite.
When I was a few years younger, several of my friends and their fathers went on a fishing trip to a barrier island off the South Carolina coast called Bulls Island. The trip to Bulls Island required a 30 minute ferry ride, which at that time was an old WWII landing craft, which for young teenage boys was worth the trip in itself. Bulls Island was known for two things….fantastic Bass fishing and a very large, healthy population of rattlesnakes….both were high in our minds. One evening my friends and I decided to walk across the island to the beach on the eastern shore, about a mile away from camp. We got there just about sunset and discovered some stuff washed up on the beach that would only interest teenage boys…one item in particular took the fancy of John…an 8 foot or so section of manila hawser used for mooring ships, probably about 3 inches in diameter. Eventually we got bored with the beach….especially since it was dark by then and we couldn’t see anything, so we headed back to camp. I remember that we had a new moon that night, and since the island was remote there was no man made light around…friends I can tell you it was dark and even darker once the road entered the tree canopy. Here we are, walking along a sandy dirt road with only one or two flashlights, not all that powerful, and suddenly we hear something rattling behind us…..we shine our dim lights to the rear and behind John is a large, brown slithering snake coming right at us…..and we ran for our lives…..but that damn snake kept right with us. After a bit we ran out of breath…the road ran out of leaves, and on second inspection the snake was John’s chunk of rope…….at that point John ran for his life as we wanted to make it plainly known how unhappy we were with his beach treasure.
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