Dogs, Dirt & Diamondbacks

You know by a child’s cry whether the offense or injury is dire, and I swear you know by a dog’s  bark when there is something horribly the matter. I was fifty yards down the hill towards the pond at our ranch in Clay County, Texas, when Birdie, my then young English Setter, started to barking at a new pitch that told me something was gravely wrong. So I headed back up. When I crested the hill she stood alertly looking at me at like she wanted to show me something and like she didn’t really recognize me at the same time. Then she decided it was time to play again, and ran to us, past us and off down the hill I had been headed down with Sally. She ran feverishly, thrilled, to the water’s edge. I followed, thinking I must have misinterpreted her bark, or heard her wrong. I shook my head at the antics of this goofy dog, our first English Setter in a line of Golden Retrievers. To my eye, she was utterly her usual joyful and muscular self, propelling her body through every moment, spring loaded at all times. This was about three years ago.

*****

My life is still mostly in Dallas. One can become aloof about the existence of death by nature there, surrounded by dark parking garages and speeding buses and people, so many people whom we do not know, and whom we have no interest in really getting to know. We begin to think death comes only from bad people and dreaded slow diseases. But barring a freak accident involving a busy tree trimmer swinging through the canopy who doesn’t see me below and drops a branch on my head while I walk through my neighborhood, my chances of being killed by nature, or association with it, are remarkably slim. Stress might get me. My lifestyle might get me. A thoughtless moment piloting a very large vehicle may get me and others around me. But nature is mostly held at bay, pushed out, manicured down to its least threatening forms. The occasional tornadoes notwithstanding, nature is mostly neutered or paved here. I can be outside all I want without really ever being outdoors, with the flood of life and wild that outdoors should entail.

*****

When I spent time in the true outdoors as a youth, notably on a ranch in Wichita County which my family once owned, I was so very blasé about the forces of nature. You could say that I surfed on nature. I shot at it and I fished for it and I walked through it. I enjoyed the views immensely and deeply, but I never crossed the threshold of allowing myself to be engaged on a level of respect or fear of the power of nature. I didn’t pay the bills. And I wasn’t ultimately responsible for myself nor certainly for anyone else. But, I still felt dominion in that way that moronic youth do.

It most certainly had to do with the fact that I had no one to protect save myself. And at that age we assume immortality, without even recognizing that arrogance. The body is very good at walking blithely through the world expecting reflex and instinct to keep things mostly running on schedule.

This is where I first came to know rattlesnakes in the wild. Back then we would pour gasoline down snake dens and wait for the snakes to emerge, and take shots at them. Call it pest extermination or mere entertainment, it is a rather frowned upon practice now for any number of reasons. But this was thirty-plus years ago before the world was painted aspirational green paint (and when there were no plastic water bottles, we wore the same pair of jeans for as long as they fit, and saved margarine tubs to be re-used for a decade). I digress. But I always digress. It’s my habit.

I now resent the biblical notion that a higher being gave us dominion over the animals. I’m not sure that is a proper word, dominion. It instills a hubris, and I believe it prompts a failure to engage as anything but an owner. A master. I prefer a model of stewardship, with exceptions. We have the intellect and tools to kill some and tame others. Is that dominion? And in your average dog/human relationship I would ask, whom has dominion over whom? Cats scoff at your notions of dominion. Snakes have likely been the number one victim of our notions of human dominion.

*****

Those days passed. That land is still where it was. The name on the deeds have changed. My great-grandfather is still buried out there, nearby, as is my great-great-grandfather and the women they dragged with them out into this land. The land persists and the humans move about. I lost it without ever fully having it and I mourned that instantly. I knew it upon losing it, what I had, and what I would strive to return to as an adult.

I can’t quite wrap my head around whether I felt I was a part of the wild back then. I felt the dominion in the way that kids pretend that what is their parents is theirs. But I also, as an adolescent with little responsibility, reveled in the wild. And you need not fear what you think you are a part of. Perhaps I was just stupid. Or both. But coming back around to my own dirt twenty some-odd years later, my relationship was both deeper and more distant. Back then, I had to grow up. I needed to. Since, I’ve yearned deeply to find a way back to the dirt. The dirt, held in hand, when you know it is yours, is a powerful thing. Space is a powerful thing. Skies and craggy rocks and trees that asked no permission as to where they would dwell and breed in their own way are powerful. And then, there are the animals.

Love. Love makes life frightening. Responsibility for other living souls, and deep abiding love of another makes life worth every fear, but these are the facts and emotions that make me tremble. Croatalus Atrox, The Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, she is always on my mind now. She is the symbol of everything I have to lose and everything that I love about being a fully terrestrial woman. We’ll come back to the snakes. But the snakes come with the land. So let’s talk about the land.

*****

This is my space, this blank page, just like our ranch in Clay County, and I can wander as I choose, so let’s talk about the dirt. I’ve been chastised before for not acknowledging it as soil, somehow not giving this matter underfoot its full due. But I’ve always regarded it as dirt in the following sense.

In the time available to me and my soul I have planted myself back in the dirt. Shouldn’t I say soil? No, to me it is dirt. It is the lovely substance of stains and itchy eyes and play. Soil is the stuff of purpose to me. It is a human expectation that the matter under our feet will grow things to please the humans, to feed us, to sustain us. Soil is to be revered in its wholesomeness as something that will hopefully not blow away and that will hopefully have that magical mixture of nutrients and elements to give gifts to the humans. It is a tool when regarded as such, as much as a plow or a simple trowel. Mine is dirt, with a few patches of soil in which we grow winter wheat for the cows. That is a fraction. The remainder is dirt. In the dirt, native grasses grow and sway in the winds and feed the cattle, yes, but also the deer and a million other beings. And the grass provides bedding for the constantly breeding and rooting feral hogs and a hiding place for the rats and mice and moles and badgers and birds.

Dirt is not an insult so much as an acknowledgment that I am a spectator, a dilettante and a novice, bent only on accompanying and witnessing the earth and whatever it bears by choice or chance. Some years that is dull dormancy and some years that is intoxicating profusions of wildflowers, mushrooms and tangled vines adorned with razor sharp thorns. Plants that will sting you. Grasses that will hitch stickers to your pants for a ride to the next pasture, and draw blood, if not merely curses.  I’m grateful that we need not wrestle all the fields into agricultural compliance. I’m glad that the cows, while they love the tender winter wheat, are quite content with the untamed grass. They plod around happily, multiplying with blessedly little intervention.

That is an oversimplification. Certainly.

But I’m not trying to make a mint off this land. In fact, I don’t need it to even feed me. It needs to feed the cows. I still go to the grocery store for my food, farmed by those who must master the soil.

I don’t get to stay for more than a few days at a spell. I have to go back and forth. Urban to rural. Rural to urban. Perhaps if I got to stay I would learn how to better use the dirt as a tool, and call it soil, and amend it and fertilize this bit and that part. But it is not a kitchen potager. And it is not even my grandmother’s impressive vegetable garden. This is more wild than that.

*****

Deer, eagles, hawks, dove, quail, buzzards, coyotes, lizards, myriad biting bugs, and pigs. Damned pigs.

*****

We all must have a place, even if it is a temporary but gloriously repeatable trip, where we can feel unbound. You must have a place where no one is watching. Sometimes I feel trapped in my home in Dallas, as though there is not one single corner or patch of earth where I can be invisible. There are homes backing up to mine and I can see my neighbors in their yards through the hedge. There are delivery drivers and mail carriers and water meter readers, and there are even my own beloved children.

We all need a place where, if even only for a few moments, we are truly alone. I suppose the mere thought terrifies some people. But my brain will not quiet until I top a hill and walk away. It can be raining or snowing or over one hundred degrees. It doesn’t matter. I need to have the ability to walk away, even if I turn back right after cresting the hill and go back.

Imprisonment is less about geography than it is about the lock. I know many people in the finest surroundings with wide open doors, that suffer because of an invisible lock. Everyone has a different lock. Pressure to succeed, pressure to perform, pressure to be a perfect mother, spouse, friend. Pressure to merely survive. Pressure to look happy because surely you have every thing that everyone says ought to make one happy.

And I know plenty of people that live very simple lives, and ones you would not think to trade yours for, who have no locks, visible or invisible. They merely walk and wander, or don’t. They feel the wind but aren’t pushed or pulled by it in any metaphysical sense. I wouldn’t trade my life for any life other than my own. But I do need time in a place where I feel free. I need to be able for a moment to feel free, and to walk away, though I never make it past the western fence line. By the time I get there I am thoroughly unburdened and I want to see my people again, and see what they are doing, see what dirt they are digging in for joy or boredom, or blessed both.

This need to be invisible is, I believe, what bonds me to the Western Diamondback rattlesnake in the wild. It is always on my mind. It is usually on my mind, actually. Those moments of clarity that we all seek sometimes are so successful that they block out externalities and one can be caught quite unaware. I’ll get to that. But, snakes, and rattlesnakes in particular, have always scared the daylights out of me. It is a deep, mostly irrational thing that I think most humans have in common. I don’t see sticks on the ground. I see snake shaped wood. Once as a child of about ten or twelve I was walking through a field hunting with my grandfather Floyd, and while men pick up their feet to get through a brushy field, children tend to plow through as fast as they can to keep up in a sweeping fashion, and I swept my foot under a snake and when I next saw that foot it had a long reptile across it. It made an impression. No one died that day, man or beast. But the snakes, imagine what they must think. I’ve come to truly believe that they also simply want to be invisible. They want to be free. They want to eat. They want to make it to the next season. They just want to be left alone. My respect of this has been a long time coming and is a pact scrawled over with caveats, exceptions, and addenda.

*****

Both of my children have the gift and curse of total inattention to things that they don’t find fascinating or important, in any particular moment. I like to see threats from a mile off so I can plan and change course. Anxiety is funny that way. It is a hyper-awareness of threats, real or imagined. It is also a gift and a curse. I sound like a bit of a case, but I think part of the job of motherhood from a natural selection perspective, sadly, is being scared out of your mind so that you can recognize threats to your children. But when one is in an area where real, existential threats exist, one wishes small people would have enough anxiety to see the possibility of a snake striking an exposed ankle. One wants them to imagine a snake under every rocky protrusion. One prays for at least enough concern to cause them to not constantly walk to the barn in flip flops. And flip flops are fine if you are scanning your environment for stickers and snakes, but the same lack of attention to the external that causes them to wear flip flops to the barn in the first place, causes them to not scan the environment for stickers and snakes. I’m thankful that stickers are more plentiful than snakes. Or rather, that snakes are not as plentiful as stickers. But yearly up here, there is a news story of some precious child or another taken painfully by a rattlesnake bite. And I do mean taken.

You might say my fear of an encounter for myself or them is overblown. You might say that. You might be right.

I’ve had a number of encounters with them just in the last few years. It has been enough to make me feel justified in my personal anxiety and the added burden of worry that I carry for two humans that until recently have had none, whatsoever. At least not on this count. They are who I once was, a bit oblivious, a bit blissfully unafraid of the known and unknown.

I assume that my husband will fend for himself. He is far less jumpy than I about certain aspects of nature. That is his privilege, I suppose, and his freedom. He knows exactly how his foot is going to land. He is better at sensing the reality of his environment even in the pitch dark than I am in the day. I am not responsible for him in the same way. He is also much like the rattlesnake in this way, with senses that compensate when vision is diminished. And I also know that his strong body could withstand a strike. I would be there for him. But, I will not worry for him ahead of that moment.

He calls it the survivor’s bias. The longer you go without an incident, the more you think you are somehow immune. I have grown to admire the rattlesnakes, but I in no sense think I am immune. Less so, as the years pass.

*****

Back to Birdie for a moment. This was a few years ago. She was just a pup, really. Thirty minutes after the barking that seemed so wrong, even from so far away, I had forgotten the incident. Later, I went into our metal barn where we keep assorted junk and fishing tackle. There are duck decoys hanging on the wall and my old Jeep sits in a side bay. I was looking for a jug of water. What I found instead, as I puttered around, was an extension cord unraveled on the ground in its customary blaze orange. The rope strewn across the cord, not out of place in girth, had a diamond pattern and a tell-tale set of black and white rings at the end. Coming across a rattler is always unsettling. But I was eight feet away and it was only two-plus feet long, and it wasn’t coiled, moving, or rattling. I stood there and watched it wondering if it were dead. There was not a twitch, no subtle look, no move to coil up so that it could have a chance to strike if I came closer.

As I looked around the garage for a flat sided shovel, anything to use should I become uncharacteristically bold, it continued to be stone still. If its head hadn’t been cocked one inch off the ground, I would have assumed it dead. Not dead enough to approach, mind you. But dead enough to throw a stone at to ensure so.

I recalled a dated but good book on rattlers by Laurence Klauber which referred to “illegitimate” snake strikes. The idea is that if you walk up to a snake on purpose and pester it, pick it up or try to kill it and it manages to get you instead, that shouldn’t be a bad mark in the snake’s column. So I backed out, closed the garage door, and considered going to get a shotgun. I also considered just walking away and leaving it be. My rule has always been that if they are on my porch of within a few feet of the house, they have asked for it. Other than that, they are just nature. I get one acre, and they get the other 999. More on that in a bit.

*****

Have you ever seen a grown man encounter a snake on the road? Driving home from the Pioneer Reunion Rodeo a few years ago, we saw a massive rattler in the road at night, either moving to happier spaces or absorbing the remaining heat from the pavement. But there it was caught in the headlights of a fast moving truck. And, this is what men do. They run them over with the truck. Then they back the truck up and get out to see if it is dead. If not dead enough, they get out a gun and finish them off in the middle of the dark road (while you are sitting in the passenger seat fuming over the fact that you are now sitting in a stopped truck in the middle of the road in the dark with two kids squalling to get out and look). The secondary threat beyond the only likely deceased reptile is that drunken rodeo revelers will also be on their way home soon with music blaring, one hand on a cold beer, one arm around a pretty girl, and a knee piloting the vehicle.

So, there was a legitimate (at least in my mind) fear that one and one’s children are going to be struck by a vehicle while one’s spouse is out trying to get struck by a half dead snake. Then there is the fear of the illegitimate, that the spouse is playing with a half dead snake.

A substantial number of rattlesnake bites are handed out by snakes thought to be dead.

I was not worried about Pitts. And, I will be there for him. Truly I will. But, I will be very angry on the way to the hospital. Again, Klauber’s term “illegitimate strike” comes to mind, as in “if one weren’t being a…let’s just say it…dumbass…it never would have happened in the first place.” In this category of rattle collectors he also lumps people who handle snakes for religious purposes, and people who stand in pits of snakes at rattlesnake roundups. One book I recently read showed a man at one such roundup with the ends of at least a half dozen snakes in his mouth, while the business end of the snakes dangled at his knees. “Look ma, no hands!” He was bent over at the waist so that the snake, presumably, wouldn’t strike his important business in the process. But, while I have many colorful adjectives to describe this sort of endeavor (or a post-rodeo-middle-of-the-road-rattle-acquisition), I think illegitimate is the most kind.

I’m fuming in the passenger seat. Pitts dispatches the snake and collects the enviable rattle. We go home. I get over it, because I always do. I like him more than I’m ever angry at him. I think he banks on that a little.  We’ve settled on a general rule of parenting wherein he worries half as much as he should and I worry twice as much as I ought to. It averages out nicely, but might lead me to an early grave. This makes him fun and adventuresome to the children. It makes me a complete nag, with intact youngsters to show for it. It all seems to work out.

These sorts of snake encounters are not irregular, if illegitimate. I’ve collected a rattle or two here and there, myself. I remember one cut off and kept a half a dozen years ago, with my son Ford. The snake was on the dirt road outside the ranch gate. I had a pocket knife and used a stick to hold the rest of the snake away from me. Brave, you say? No, the snake had been dead for at least 12 hours. That is when Mike, our beloved cow man and resident story teller, had run over it and told me all about it. Even he warned me not to get near that head, even after all that time. As many resources state, and statistics apparently bear out, and a man on an airplane last week has confirmed…, even a decapitated rattler can strike a half hour or more after it has lost its body. Cold blooded animals need less oxygen and energy to function. And their nervous system is so programmed to respond to stimulus that it can happen without the brain playing a part. So, be fully aware, a dead snake is not really a dead snake until all of these post-mortem signals play out. Both sides of a decapitated snake will continue to squirm. The head can still deliver a blow, with venom and all.

When we have killed a snake for whatever reason, I always take the opportunity to take photos of the scales and patterns. Mostly you cannot tell the snake is deceased in these photos. It just seems kind of sad to me. I don’t glory in the gore. But the scales and colors are simply something one doesn’t get to experience except close up. And close up is not a good idea with a live rattlesnake. And it must be done with caution with a dead one.

*****

If dead snakes can cause so much trouble, a live one is certainly formidable. Back to Birdie.

When I walked into the house to let my Ford know there was a rattlesnake about and to maybe keep the dogs in for a bit, I noticed that my sprightly Birdie had a black spot on her snout. On closer inspection, it looked a little more like dried blood.  And on even closer inspection I noticed that the sides of her snout did not match. She was swelling on the side with the blood. Immediately I remembered the barking and the sound of worry, and the out of character response to my call. Snake strike. That snake, the one I found in the barn, had taken refuge after a scrap with my dog.

Birdie wasn’t whimpering, but she wasn’t about to let me touch her face. I texted Pitts who wouldn’t be joining us at the ranch until the next day and sent him a photo of her. He called back within a moment or two to confirm my worry and to get Birdie and me on the road.

“Get on the road to the Falls, and I’ll call you and tell you where to go.”

Birdie shot out of the house without a care and immediately started hunting, still, sniffing, seeing things with her ever inflating nose. That’s how this mess got started in the first place, I suppose. But hit the road we did, and Pitts called to give me the name and address of a vet in Waurika, Oklahoma. For the first 15 minutes of the drive all she wanted to do was stick her nose out the window. Then she started getting tired, and laying down. I stopped at the farm-to-market junction and tried to put her in the front seat so I could keep an eye. But she popped right back to her spot in the back.

I entered Byers, Texas within a few moments. The truly incredible thing about the drive, and it was likely just my heightened senses, was that everything was so damned beautiful. The grasses were waving in the strong wind, and the light was just so. The blacktop road was cutting a line through an ocean of loveliness and it was stunning. And my pup was in the back seat in agony, slowly getting quiet on me. I passed an abandoned house that I had stopped to photograph on a previous trip. There were cows milling in and out of the structure and lolling about in what was once a front yard. It was the kind of scene that stops me in my tracks on a normal day to take photos. I kept on. No time. As I turned onto the highway to Oklahoma, I noticed a car pulling over at the next dirt road east. The car stopped just after making the turn and the woman in the driver’s seat was leaning out of the window of the car looking down onto the ground. There was a rattlesnake. I suppose they had run over it with their front tire. I suppose she was assessing whether her snake was good and dead. I had heard it was going to be a bad year for snakes. I suppose it had been true.

*****

Birdie’s was by no means the first encounter we had between snakes and the dogs. And, given how much of the day the dogs spend out exploring, there have no doubt been many other encounters. It is impossible to imagine otherwise. Again, they truly are a part of the landscape.

Imagine this beautiful spring day, when I was out hunting for wildflowers with my camera by a rocky hill that I call Snake Hill. Not a particularly creative name, but an accurate one. It is snaky. It just is. Big rocks, big sun, big shade, near water. It is gorgeous. But it also has dens. Since I was not out looking for animals, I let my Golden Retriever, Sally, join me for the jaunt. This was pre-Birdie. Then, Sally was the one that could run at flat-out top-speed for hours. If you wonder why a city dog eats your sofa, take them out to a ranch or farm and set them free. Any dog that can run like that for miles and miles and miles in the heat over the roughest terrain is going to eat your house on some level out of sheer pent-up potential. Dogs are like carbonated drinks, sealed in a bottle.

I was looking for flowers but I was definitely also looking for snakes. My head was on straight. I was being aware and scanning the rocks and looking for a break in the patterns of the wild that might be a coil or a wavy line, seeing every last snake shaped piece of wood. I made sure Sally stayed near me while we walked around the hill. I snapped photos and I looked for the next bloom while simultaneously watching each footfall.

The sound of a rattler unleashing its song, its percussive trill, which no human musician can copy, strikes fear. That cliche can not be an accident. Though certain insects impressively mimic the sound, and certain dry grasses do a game imitation when stepped upon, an authentic rattle is something that immediately chills you to the bone. The insect copy often makes one jumpy, but the real thing is unmistakable and touches you to the core. And if the snake is close when it starts, if the heart attack doesn’t get you, the snake certainly has a shot. And, it will be close. Sometimes we have heard a rattle go off when we were still many yards away and up an embankment, but I half way wonder if some other creature had set off the warning on those occasions. It seems that a rattler would rather conceal itself than warn a human. So usually, you are within easy range if it does you the courtesy of scaring the daylights out of you with its rattle. Sally was within inches on that beautiful spring day. My awareness of the sound of the rattle was simultaneous to seeing Sally fly in my direction as though she was spring loaded.

Flying dogs and rattling snakes are an unusual micro-second. And that is what it always is, a micro-second extended to a seeming hour in a parallel universe. I suppose I yelped. I suppose I grabbed her collar and yanked her even further away. And then, predictably for the dog and predictably for a photographer, we both yearned for a closer look. And here’s the spot. I wanted to see where it was going. I wanted to see it from a safe distance and capture a photo. But the dog wanted to inspect more closely. So my already manifest human worry over braving a closer look was compounded by my absolute fear that the dog would be struck. She hadn’t been initially, thankfully. But we can’t lose this dog any more than we can lose a close family member. Not negligently, anyway.

I harbor some guilt that I might have negligently hastened the death of our last dog, Poppy. She was old and tired, more-so than she should have been according to her years. But I let her accompany me on a long walk up a hillside and around a pasture and by the time we headed back to the house I probably should have been carrying her, though her own pride and love of the same things I love kept her ahead of me. She died within days. I couldn’t carry back another near dead dog. So we both pulled back, Sally and I. I, reluctantly but responsibly; She, unwillingly and dragged. This was the first time since my twenties that I had felt the fear but also felt the urge to get closer, to see and to understand. But, I couldn’t. I had to be the adult, the mother, and get the dog away.

Later that afternoon, I went back to that spot and found her, the snake. I like to think it was a female for some reason, sunning. She had half her body strewn blithely out in the sun and the other part concealed. I took a photo from too far away to be impressive and she took herself into her home. She apparently also, doesn’t appreciate feeling watched in her own backyard. I found no other snakes sunning on Snake Hill that day. I walked around with every nerve ending alert, every sound heard, every movement of every blade of grass noted. But they were gone, or hidden, or lurking, or elsewhere.

This was the spark of my interest in them as creatures. This was the spark of interest that they had an existence as something other than a threat, while I do always perceive them as a threat. This was when I finally picked up a book about their habits and nature. I’ve spent plenty of time comparing snake proof boots online, or looking up first aid information. I read for defense. Now I started reading to know them a little better.

*****

By the time Birdie and I passed Byers, Texas, I had a straight road into Waurika, Oklahoma, the closest place to find a vet with anti-venin (also known as anti-venom). Anti-venin is the precious substance, related to a vaccine in its genesis, that is used to counteract a snake bite. It is costly, and it is a fascinating process to create anti-venin which entails snake milking and the creation of antibodies in horses.

As I crossed the bridge into Oklahoma I pulled behind a champagne colored pickup truck that was swerving on and off the road, clearly inebriated even at just after noon. I had to go though the mental process of knowing that if it came down to choosing between stopping and rendering aid to a drunk who went off the road, or getting my snake-bit dog to the vet, the dog was going to win, no doubt. So I carefully chose a moment to pass so that I wouldn’t have to blame myself for arguably having misaligned priorities when it inevitably happened. Nor was I content to abide going under the speed limit as the drunk was trying to do.

Birdie laid her head down in the corner of the seat and the door on the driver’s side and I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t twist enough and I couldn’t put the mirror on her. I reached back and couldn’t feel her breathing. And I realized I was just as apt to kill myself or some family while I was going 70 and trying to see if Birdie was still alive. So I just put my hands on the wheel and drove.

When I pulled up at the vet, on the right just before the Sonic, as Pitts had said, I immediately jumped out of the car and opened the door. Birdie jumped up and tried to jump out to resume some kind of play. Not even remotely dead. But she was also not herself.

*****

People say that rattlesnakes can be aggressive. I suppose that sounds logical given their mode of defense, and they may be in that sense, but after dozens of encounters now, I’ve never found one to be the aggressor. They are always going about their business, or going about no seeming business at all, and get caught in the open. Then they face the same choices we do and arguably, but not certainly, with less intellectual capacity to decide on strategies.

At the ranch, if we are near the house, the human options include, but are not limited to by any means: walk away and hope it leaves, grab a pistol, grab the pump loaded with rat shot, grab some other handy firearm, grab the long handled sharp hoe that was purchased exactly for this purpose, grab a big log, or grab the grabbers. Yes, we now actually have a snake grabber. It is like one of those hinged-mouth pinch tools that can help folks reach things…except industrial grade and made for snake grabbing. One pinches the snake at the neck and once so secured, holds the handle firmly and removes the snake to the secondary crime scene to decide whether to dispatch it with any of the aforementioned tools or set it free. Now that I’ve mentioned the propensity for snakes to strike after technical death, you can see that a snake grabber is actually a very nice item for disposing of snakes which have been killed as well as a snake that has been pardoned. But for Pitts, who works in outdoor buildings, who has found rattlesnakes hanging out in his shop on many occasions, a snake grabber is essential. Waiting them out is not going to happen. And firing a gun at a concrete floor is not bright.

****

My code. I mentioned the 999 acres earlier. I’m not saying this is logical. But, snake people fall into roughly two camps.

Why kill snakes at all? They are lovely and fascinating creatures. They keep a balance. If you kill the snakes there will be too many rats and mice. If you kill the skunks there will be too many snakes. If you kill the opossums, they can’t eat all the ticks. An ecosystem in balance needs its cast of characters. Fair.

That’s one camp.

The only good snake is a dead snake.

This is the other camp.

As is usual for a gray person in a messy world, possibly…no…definitely too empathetic for this world…I see both sides. The best I can settle on, with very murky boundaries, is the one acre rule. And this rule may someday come back to bite me most literally. That is why I leave it murky and subject to circumstances. The idea is that I get my acre, the one where the children and dogs are most likely to be found. If a snake should wander onto my acre, all bets are off. The other 999 belong to them. That is where they are supposed to be and that is where they live and if possible, I will give them that space and I will back away and let them go about their business.

Love makes life frightening. I said that earlier too. I meant it. I am a photographer. I am out in the sticks all the time. And when I need to feel 99.5% safe from the elements, I can go inside and pull a reverse aquarium, wherein I can watch all the nature I want from the comfort of my air conditioned (or equally critical, heated) house. You can often find me or Pitts standing by the back door with a cup of coffee and binoculars counting deer or pigs at the feeder a hundred plus yards in the distance. Sometimes skunks get under the house and remind me that I’m never truly alone, even inside. In Clay County the wind brings so much dust that between times that we are there, a layer of dirt accumulates across the entire house…floors and surfaces, and in little sunshine spots some bug or another will have gone through a hatching and there will be a little pile of insect carcasses. The outside does not truly stay outside and the dogs drag it in on their fur and we track it in on our boots, too.

But, for me, when alone, I can separate from the animals. By that I mean I can observe them instead of being part of the story. I generally feel like I understand the snakes for the most part, so for the most part I can leave them be. But, I am rarely alone. Most of the time. I am either being followed by, or concerned for the whereabouts of either one or two dogs. And, the same is true for two children. I just deposited one of those children at college in Florida and I hope the wild in Texas has prepared her for the crazy in Florida, but when we bought this land, even she was little. And her brother was even smaller, maybe six, with the cartoonish adoration of all animalia intact.

When I was little my parents used to take us hunting and fishing often. More than often. Part of going to, being at, or returning from these times in the wild was spotting animals. Did you see that flash of white, a whitetail deer rear? Did you see that movement two hundred yards away? Do you see those antelope in the field? One of the highest forms of praise was when my brother or I would see something before my dad and he would say, calmly, “good eye” and confirm the sighting. Since we have been in Clay County I find myself saying “good eye” for the regular fauna, but most often and with great relief, when one of the children actually sees a snake from some distance. That is ambiguous. I am not happy that they see a snake. I am happy that if they are to see a snake, they see if from a distance, so there is room for thought and action. “Mom, I was going down to the pond to fish and there was a huge black snake on the dock, so I fished from the bank.” Water moccasin. Thank god. Not for the snake, but that he saw it. “Mom, there’s a really long snake climbing the wall of the house up to the light by the door.” Long, no rattle, climbing, rat snake, leave it. It’s fine. They are big but harmless…to humans. But thank heavens she saw it.

The dogs. They smell everything. It is how they acquire information. Why would dogs sniff rears otherwise? Information. But the same goes for insects and snakes. They put their nose right up to it and smell it…be it a centipede, a scorpion, a wasp or a snake…to figure it out. To love a dog in the country is to know that you are one sniff away from chaos at any moment. A covey of quail may burst up from underneath their nose. Or, or, they might get popped on the snout by a rattlesnake. You can actually snake train your dogs, a process that involves rattlesnakes with their mouths somehow disabled and shock collars for the dogs. It sounds brutal, but the alternative of driving to Waurika to find out if your dog is going to die is brutal, too. Life can be brutal.

Dogs and children we love make life frightening. A moment, a reality check here: I find the city far more existentially perilous. When the children were small, they were far more apt, statistically speaking, to get run over in a parking lot, hit by a bus stepping off a curb, get bit by a ill mannered dog at the park, or to catch some funky intestinal bug licking a shopping cart handle than to be seriously injured or killed by anything in the country. It is the truth. The daily threats of life in a city become white noise and a constant ache in your stomach, and you simply stop acknowledging them…survivor’s bias, he called it.

But injury or death by snake is written into our DNA somehow. They are the enemy in the oldest of tales. They are the symbols and charms. They are the magic and the myths. It is they that make the country wild. I think it is patently unfair that the foil of our oldest tales is the snake. And it appears that Eve and the snake were chummy to start out and all of a sudden God is reported to say she needs to be scared of him and that her children will crush the snake’s head underfoot and the snake will bite at the children. May I also remind you this is the bit where the Lord allegedly cursed women with painful childbirth? There’s some fabulous work in that book, but this bit grinds my gears. Why? Why must that poor animal be on the receiving end of millennia of hatred? A story told that often seeps into human soul. It’s hard to shake. I think we’ve done awful things with and too this book over the years, but I suspect the fact that we’ve had deity-sanctioned hatred toward a mere creature for this long is simply not fair. It would have been so much more convenient for all of us if Satan had been a cockroach in this story. I’ll let my kids crush those guys underfoot all day. I’ve yet to find their beauty or value to the ecosystem.

***** 

I would bet that the wisdom is true, that they want nothing whatsoever to do with us. We are big, you see. Even the children and dogs are big to a snake. Anything over rabbit size is a nuisance to a snake. Something that will cause it only sorrow. It is really quite unfair and undignified if you give it much thought. It is a creature without arms and without legs. Its main gifts are the ability to hide, and failing that, to strike. But the asset it expends to strike is the asset it needs to eat, venom. I’m referencing pit vipers here, not constrictors which have a different skill set to go with their disabilities. But a viper, such as a rattlesnake or a moccasin strike small mammals and such and then wait for the mostly hemotoxic venom to disable the animal which they then consume. Hemotoxins specialize in necrosis and hemorrhaging as opposed to neurotoxins (which rattlesnake venom also contains in less abundance) which causes paralysis. They cannot otherwise eat. Strike fast. Disable. Consume. Venom is costly to waste. And, they cannot eat us. Even if they wanted to they cannot. So to waste an asset as precious as venom on a human or even a dog is a life or death decision in two ways. They do it to protect their life but potentially at the cost of their own life if they are unable to strike and disable an edible mammal or predator thereafter. It takes time to regenerate the toxins. And this is why they try to escape. Barring that, they intimidate and try to escape. And barring that, they strike. Older ones, the bigger ones that you fear the most, learn to dry strike…strike expending little venom. So ironically, it is the little snakes that can cause the most trouble with an uncontrolled strike. And by warning us, or trying to intimidate, with their blood curdling rattle, all they do is disclose their whereabouts making them all the more vulnerable, when all they want to do is scare us away so that we don’t cause them to waste venom.

People say they don’t rattle as much as they used to. People say it is because of the feral hogs. But I wonder if they finally evolved to a world with shotguns in it. Rattling just makes them easier to kill.

*****

The vet was a zero nonsense large animal specialist who had no doubt treated a hunting dog or two over the years. And he was not receptive to the whimpering of a Dallas mother overly concerned about her pup. But I’m here to tell you that Birdie was having none of either of us and this tiny dog found every bit of her strength as we both tried to hold her down to get shots in her and get an IV started. She put up an incredible fight but she was fading and was finally subdued. Once the IV was going he looked inside her mouth and checked for signs of necrosis or dying tissue to see how far along we were in the process. He popped her in a kennel and informed me he’d call us and let us know how it was going. In other words, goodbye lady. Go home.

*****

On an earlier occasion, on a lovely evening, Pitts was working on an old Jeep that I had the misfortune of falling for when we bought the place. It’s too out of whack to put on the road without real money put into it. But it is too cool to get rid of. It runs about half the time and has God knows what issues lurking around the corner. Without his patient interventions, it would be but a lawn ornament. In the dying light of the September evening, we misplaced a wing nut somewhere on the concrete drive by the barn. Committed to helping in some tiny way, I went to the house for a flashlight. I heard the kids playing outside in the distance. I was happy they weren’t underfoot because I just wanted to help finish up this little job, so Pitts could actually do something, anything, that he actually wanted to do. I ran to the house through the kitchen door, the closest entrance, went to the laundry room to grab a flashlight and headed for the sliding glass door nearby to head back out. These two doors are only about 10 feet apart.

The sliding glass door. What could be less interesting than a sliding glass door. I’ve opened and shut it a thousand times, at least. I’ve griped at the children for leaving it slightly open when they run in. I’ve struggled with the lock. I’ve been amazed by the insects that amass on it at night when we leave the inside light on. But I never once thought about the ruckus that it makes on the tracks when I wing it open in a hurry. I never thought about how unsettling that abrupt vibration might be to a creature sitting, resting really, just outside that door. Snakes are deaf in the traditional sense, so while I now will never be able to remove the hiss and the rattle from the rushing of the sliding door on the track, I know that all the snake heard, rather felt, was that out of nowhere an enormous glass wall moved and swooshed away with no warning. There was no vibration of slowly approaching foot falls or odor or sight to give it a moment to conceal itself with color or to retreat and hide under something. In fact if may have been in retreat from nearer to the kitchen door. There’s no telling how close I was on my initial approach to the house.

Here’s a highly simplified primer on pit vipers. Pit vipers, which rattlesnakes and water moccasins both are examples of, have two tiny “pits” on their face between their eyes and their nose. These pits sense infrared light, or in other words they sense heat. It is as though they have night vision all the time. They have typical vision and they have infrared “vision” and they have hearing in the sense that they can sense vibration, and they have tongue flicking which is an equivalent to smelling. This is how they know whether prey is near or a predator is near. I was coming from behind a wall of glass in a hurry and took the snake completely by surprise.

And, I, I was preoccupied. I didn’t have my armor up. Or on. I typically wear 12 inch high turkey hunting boots even in the heat of summer. They are good, tough leather Russell’s, and they have snake cloth all around, tested, and approved. But, I was in sneakers, because all I was doing was keeping my mechanic company in the garage and fetching things.

And that was my moment, perhaps my millisecond. I was within one foot of a hissing, scared, rattling, angry snake.

I shut the door as quickly as I opened it seeing only a plate size circle of preternatural horror as I turned and ran for the kitchen. Had I been alone, I could have looked and observed behind glass, me in the aquarium, it in its natural habitat, while I recovered from my near heart attack. But my gravest fear was in force. The dog and both children were outside and this was the main entrance that we all use. I ran out the other door, yelling for Pitts, finding the dog (this was also pre-Birdie), listening for the children’s’ laughter so I could place them and yell for them to stay away. Had they headed for the house, they would have wheeled around that corner and been in the same position I was without the benefit of a glass door to slam.

I did all these things. I found the husband and the dog and the children. Pitts was only about thirty feet away at the garage so we had assembled the dependants easily between the two of us. The snake really had neither the time nor the composure to get away and when Pitts approached it from the same glass door to dispatch it, it was fully coiled and did not hesitate at all this time to strike at Pitts. He was at a safe distance, just barely. He checked his pants leg for holes, though. We killed the snake. The story ended quickly, though we spent an hour coming down, recovering our composure, breathing again. Always remember that a fully coiled rattler can strike and land a blow on an animal half the distance of its own length. The spring loading of a coiled snake is integral to that ability. Not that I’d risk it but you are safer if a snake is not coiled. This poor snake had violated the one acre rule with grave results. Its rattle is but a decoration now, in a bowl of curiosities. It’s true. I want to feel bad about that. But I do not. There is a very bright line for a mother. Scientists and naturalists would not find comfort here. I’m trying. But when there is great risk to the kids, the kids win every time. I don’t want the snakes around the porch.

*****

If you see photos of scientists working with snakes, they often get the snakes into PVC tubes to disable them. It is a strange thing to see. I love that people research rattlesnakes and their venom and the snake’s part in our world. Snake venom components are being studied for their efficacy as anti-coagulants, and anti-microbials and tumor shrinking drugs. It is not true that the only good snake is a dead snake. What if Eve’s friend the serpent is a key to solving the mysteries of breast cancer? How would that be for irony? But, I also love living in rural Texas when I can. If you live in a city and have opinions about guns, and you’ve never encountered a rattler between you and your children…yet you opine about the lack of “need” for this or that firearm like you have read the Blue Book on Gun Values cover to cover and can break down a M4A1 like a Navy Seal…this is why rural people roll their eyes at you. And I’m not even going to start on the feral hogs.

*****

When I got back to the ranch without Birdie the snake had made its way out of the garage and into the drive. I had warned Ford before I left that there was a rattlesnake about. He was spending the day involved with a game and he had not even wandered out. I may have asked him not to go out, in retrospect, until I returned and the crisis was behind me. That sounds very much like something I would have asked of him at that age. The snake was halfway across the expanse of gravel and I saw it and was out of my mind with fury. I ran into the house and grabbed a pump-action shotgun that we keep handy for varmints. I ran back outside and fired at the snake from a distance at which I was not going to miss. I pumped the gun, throwing one more shell into the chamber and shot the snake again for good measure. It was pure spite. It was pure retribution and anger. I felt zero guilt then and zero now. I blew its head straight off its body and then, because of what I know about snakes, became rather concerned that I couldn’t find the head. I think it became red mist.

*****

A few months ago, my son accompanied me to one of the spots where I like to look for flowers. He was bored and drove me around the ranch in an ATV so I could see the things I like to see. We travelled with a few sodas and all my camera gear. The gun rack was empty. The gun rack in that ATV is undependable and is just as apt to drop a shotgun right on your head. And we were going to the other 999.

As we descended the rocky layers that have the quality of a small amphitheater, I saw the elongated shape. I saw it from at least 50 feet away. It was perfectly blended into the rocky background color-wise. Its camouflage was excellent. It could have been a big stick or limb, but all sticks are snakes until they have been deemed otherwise and I knew this was a unique situation. The snake had been sunning on a rock out-cropping. It would have been a perfect spot  for the snake except that it had a taller rock on both sides and an earthen berm behind it. In front of it was a four foot drop to the ground.

My son is now a six-foot-something Eagle Scout who looks out for his mother the way his mother looks out for him. Someday he will overtake me on this count but not yet. He is graduating and growing out of my fear-of-imminent-disaster zone. We stood and watched the snake and I explained to him how we were going to approach. The snake had not begun to retreat, perhaps hoping we hadn’t seen her. I had my long telephoto lens. She was virtually trapped. In reality I knew she could retreat but I also knew now a bit about the behavior and intended to use it to take some rare photos. I still insisted he stay behind me. So silly, but I did.

When we approached, the snake went into an expected flight mode so we made sure to move in a direction she would perceive as cutting off her point of exit. As expected she stopped, couldn’t make it the other way in time, and began the process of trying to frighten us away. Note, she could not harm us. We were too far away and snakes don’t fly. It was as though she had been put on a podium from which she could not step down. I must have taken two hundred photos. She would begin to fall back and I would approach by a few more inches and she would rear back up, fully a third of her body was off the ground in an S shape giving her the ability to strike if I approached. The tongue flicking and the dancing were amazing to see from relative safety, and the ability to move her with the pressure of my movement from one side of her to the other was fascinating. We backed up, then approached, then moved one way, then the other. She reacted somewhat predictably given her predicament.

At some point when I felt I had gotten the images I wanted, we backed away about ten feet. I never intended to kill this snake and didn’t want to damage it by causing it significant stress in the the heat, in a situation she didn’t feel she could escape. I wouldn’t want to feel that way and I feel like I know how she felt. They’ve put me near a coronary event enough times in the past. I was doing the same to her. She had given me an opportunity to photograph her in her fear and rage. Once the pressure was off she quickly assessed her escape route and we watched as she ably descended through a patch of grass and across a lower level of rocks and then out into the grassy nowhere. Gone.

*****

Pitts joined us at the ranch the day after Birdie’s encounter and my race for the border. Birdie turned out fine. That vet has my eternal gratitude. I haven’t lost a dog to a snake yet, but I know it is part of the bargain. It is going to happen one of these days. It’s bound to. We went together to get Birdie when she was released. It was a far more pleasant drive. She had not been too horribly envenomated and we had gotten her care quickly. And we were willing to spill money for an animal that was an important part of the family.

She still sticks her nose in every crack she sees. She still sees the world nose first. I know it will happen again. Birdie loves to lounge in Pitts’ lap. She is fond of the comforts of home. But she is a creature of the 999 acres, too, just like the Western Diamondback. That is where she longs to run and where she must be called back from when the coyotes begin to howl in the evening. But Birdie is truly of the 999. It will happen again, a snake bite. And I will keep my eyes open and try not to press my own luck. For every snake we’ve decided to kill, we’ve watched many more go on about their business. My fascination with the wild abides, and always will. We have a funny relationship, the wild and I. It is hard to learn about things you don’t at least appreciate. And I am awed by the rattlers. I will try to watch my step. I hope for both our sake that they avoid the porch.