My Rattlesnake

Small strange animals have always appealed to me. I kept salamanders and lizards as pets when I was a kid and fed them mealworms that I raised myself in a box of oatmeal. I had mice, goldfish, turtles, even a crayfish. Never kept snakes around, but I caught a few. And then there was my snake-killing summer.

My snake-killing summer began when I was given a new 22 rifle, but soon became tired of shooting at cans. I didn't want to kill anything cute like rabbits, squirrels, or robins, so I decided that rats would be my victims.

There was a dirt road behind my grandmother's house and some old farm buildings. Off I went in search of rats. Instead, I came across a huge rattlesnake, a diamondback rattler.

Although I didn't know it at the time, it would turn out to be the only rattlesnake that I would ever see in my many hikes through fields and woods. Looking back, it seems incredible that at the very moment when I needed something "bad and ugly" to kill, a rattlesnake would obligingly turn up. I am still totally mystified by these odd coincidences that dot our lives and though some would say "God's Plan", I remain mystified!

Well, it wasn't too hard to shoot the big snake through the head. Poisonous snakes seldom show fear. They think that rattling, hissing, and looking mean will protect them.

Naturally, I returned to my grandmother's house strutting proud over my "kill" and had to show it off to everybody. It was also a golden opportunity to scare my little sister into hysterics. Eventually everyone had "oohed and ahhed" over the snake and things settled down to a lazy summer afternoon.

I'm gonna save the skin!

It was the only logical thing to do: skin the snake and preserve the skin. I had read how to do it. All I needed was a knife, a board, and some nails.

I made the belly incision and began the process of slowly pulling back the skin of the snake, nailing it to the board as I went along.

Do you remember reading about how Galva-something-or-other discovered the nervous system when he was dissecting a frog and the legs twitched? Well, I had about half of the snake skinned, with the skin stretched and nailed to the board, when my knife apparently touched a nerve. The entire six feet of snake did a quick whiplash, pulling out all the nails and scaring me so much that I fell over backwards.

After I got my courage back, I renailed the nails and continued skinning, but much more cautiously. When I finally had all of the skin stretched and nailed, then I rubbed plenty of salt in it and let it dry in the sun. I toyed with the idea of eating some of the meat ("tastes like chicken") but the skinned carcass looked very unappetizing.

I kept the snakeskin for a number of years, but it never did smell quite right, so one day it got thrown in the trash. Within days I was regretting the loss of the skin.

As time passes and it becomes more and more obvious that I will never see another big rattlesnake, I just regret the loss of that skin all the more. So let that be a warning to you. No matter how much your accomplishments stink, don't throw them away.