This is a section from my farm story

Sneaky snakes; let me tell you a thing or two, or seventy-six

Sneaky snake made his appearance in the chicken coop in 96 as soon as spring warmed him up enough to thaw out his bones. In fact there were a lot of sneaky snakes. On the other hand it may have been the same snake that kept undulating back when I would chuck him over the fence.

I found them in the feed bin, stealing eggs and crawling through the trees looking for a warm chicken wing to sleep under. As I recall I spent most of the summers after 96 chasing snakes. I would go out to the feed bin, open the lid, look inside, scream, “snake”, slam the lid down and stomp back to the house for the leather gloves. I would go back to the feed bin and move the feedbags to make a clear path to reach him and snatch him by the neck and yank him out of the bin. I would have to grab him in the middle of his body as most of them were about five foot long and three or four inches wide. I would then take them all the way to the back of the property and throw them over the fence.

Sometimes I would take them across the road and throw them in the culvert of my neighbors’ driveway. I think he would have been pretty upset if he knew I did that. Somehow it seemed like revenge for his dog killing my turkeys. (that’s another story) All of the snakes I caught were Texas rat snakes. They were black with mottled markings and a creamy bottom. They were not poisonous. Apparently if you have Texas rat snakes you don’t have rattlers or cottonmouths. I would have preferred not to have any. I didn’t mind the snakes themselves, but I didn’t like them in the feed bin or stealing eggs from the setting hens. I waged battle with all I came across. It seemed like there were at least 10 or 12 a year.

One day I walked into my kitchen and stopped at the doorway. ‘Hmmm ¼¼¼, there is something wrong with this picture’, I thought. Something is out of place. I watched for a minute and then saw a huge snake start to undulate from the top of the oven down the side heading for the basket of eggs sitting on the counter. I hollered for help. I am ahead of the story as this incident happened in 97 after David moved onto the farm. I was hollering for David to come and hold a gallon jar for me. My plan was to catch the snake and stuff him in the jar. I gave David the jar then I put on the gloves. When I made a lunge for the snake he started to retreat back behind the oven. ‘Oh, no, you don’t’, I thought as I grabbed him square in the middle. His head then popped back up from his escape route. I grabbed his head with the other hand. I tried to push him into the jar. David didn’t tell me he was afraid of snakes and every time I tried to get part of the snake into the opening David would wiggle the jar shaking like a leaf. Besides that the snake was way too big for the jar and I would have never made him fit.

I decided to just take him to the back and throw him over the fence like the others. He may indeed been the same snake I threw before, only this time he had grown larger. As I carried the snake, with David following me, he seemed to get heavier and heavier. This one was one of the biggest I dealt with. I was just about to the fence when he wiggled his head loose enough from the grasp I had on him and turned and bit my glove.

Fortunately, the gloves were too large and the fingers were an inch longer than my hands. The snake held on to the leather and with my last bit of strength I flung him over the barbed wire. I thought I would loose the glove as it was still attached to his fangs, but he let go just in time. At least I didn’t have to chase after my glove. I laughed about it all the way back to the house, however, I don’t think David was even mildly amused.

chicken girls that the snake chose to sleep with

On another night I was closing up the coop and shined the flashlight up into the trees to count the hens. I caught a movement other than feathers. I moved the light around until I could see what it was. Sure enough, a snake was making his way sliding over the branches going from chicken to chicken. They were way too big for a snake to eat, so I watched to see what he was doing.

Pretty soon he selected a chicken and snuggled under her wing and went to bed. That was a smart snake choosing the warmest bed in the tree to sleep in. I left them alone. After that I made a point to make sure the girls went inside. No more sleeping in the trees and loaning their wings for non-paying guests. Chickens are very vulnerable at night. They have almost no vision and sit still when they are touched. They are very easy to capture. That is why so many of them make the midnight buffet menu. I learned to keep a shovel by the gate of the chicken coop. There were times at night when I didn’t feel like running a snake to the neighbors and I would snag them with the shovel and beat them to death. I put a lot of hacks in the ground chasing them.

One night I went to close the coop door and two snakes were entwined in the gate wire and themselves. I grabbed the shovel, flipped one to the ground and make short work of him. The other managed to disappear. When I went around the other side of the coop to the back nursery area there he was making headway halfway up that gate. I got him too.

I always made sure to scoop them up and haul them to the burn pile. I never left any bodies, either snake or dead poultry in the coop area. I always removed and put them to burn. I did that to keep the flies from breeding and the ants and other varmints from having an easy meal.

Once my daughter said she saw two snakes in the breezeway crawl up under a table. I got a shovel and pulled the tablecloth up, and sure enough there was one tucked under there. I flipped him out with the shovel and whacked his head off. We never could find the other one. The next morning I came out of the house and there was another snake lying on the porch with his head gone. When my daughter got up she said while she was going to sleep she heard a noise from the rafters of the cabin. Thinking it was a mouse or other small scratchy thing she didn’t give it much thought. All of a sudden the thing fell from the rafters and hit the bed on top of her. She told me she jumped up and found it was the other snake. She seized the shovel and gave him all of her attention.

I thought this was pretty funny, only because it didn’t happen to me. I was also proud of her to be able to deal with it in the fashion she did.

Over time I noticed when two snakes were found together one was always much larger than the other. I came to the conclusion they were probably in the mating process. Most of the time I would find only one snake at a time. I never did find a den of little ones. The most I ever saw at once was four small ones in the feed bin.

Another time I had eggs in an incubator. I opened it to check on the eggs and turn them. When I peeked inside a hissing mouth of a curled up snake met me. He was bound and determined to stay where the easy meal was and I was equally determined he would not. The snake lost.

There were probably more snake encounters, but after awhile I got callused enough to say “oh, sh—another snake”, get the shovel, deal with it, and get on with what ever I was doing. Living so close to Mother Nature you had to contend with whatever crawled out of the bushes, or in this case with what slithered out from underneath a rock, or nest, or box or feed bin. Every once and awhile I would find some discarded snake skins from a molting process. It has taken about 10 years, but most of the snakes have vacated the farm. They probably have a sign outside the fence that says ‘Beware of the Witchy Woman’.

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