Killer Team

Rick and I killed our first rattlesnake last Sunday. As I was telling the story, to Emily during our video chat, I discovered Rick’s version of events to be very different from mine. I guess fear and adrenaline can skew perceptions. I’ll try to relay events with a little bit of both our stories.

Winter, our faithful golden retriever, was hunting for lizards out by the pool when I called her to the porch for dinner. She usually runs like a thoroughbred back to the house when I present her food, but this time she froze in her tracks. I called her a second time, and she responded by very attentively barking at the bushes. Beneath the sound of her snake bark, I heard rattling. Uh oh. I called her up to the porch and she quickly obeyed. This was weird because she usually doesn’t back down from prey. Maybe her rattlesnake training finally kicked in. Maybe she remembered how I yelled at her for throwing the quail around a few days earlier or my firm "no" when she bit a tarantula (which didn't bite back).

I locked her up on the porch and went inside to get some sturdy shoes, a snake stick, and a man with a shovel. Do you know what a snake stick is?—it’s a long pole with a pincher on the end that is activated by squeezing a handle at the other end of the pole. This is the one I ordered from Amazon last fall after my friend helped me remove a rare tiger rattlesnake from our yard. 

So me, my snake stick, and my shovel-bearing man went out to investigate the rattle in the bushes. 

It happened once before that the dog alerted us to a rattlesnake and by the time I got out there, it was gone. When we went out to investigate this time, I was afraid we missed it again. No rattle. No snake. Did I imagine the sound and overreact?

We decided to put Winter on a leash and lead her out to help us find the snake again. That dog is so well-behaved when I’m holding her leash that she just stayed by my side and didn’t hop around the bushes like she normally would.  We took a risk and let her off the leash. Within seconds, BAM! She found the Western Diamondback near the hammock coiled up and ready to strike. It looked exactly like this:

Rick used his scary man voice to call the dog off. While Andrew locked her up, I crept around to the other side of the snake. Without the threat of the dog, the snake turned its attention to me. It rattled like crazy and held its head up about 6 inches from the ground. Snakes can strike the length of their body. I guessed this snake was about 4 feet long. My snake stick is about 4 feet long. I was nervous.

The plan was that I would grab the snake and hold it with the tongs. Rick would then murder it with the shovel.

"OK, are you ready?" I said, trying to sound confident.

"Where is it?" Rick said.

"Right there, can't you see it?" I gestured a little with the snake stick. While we were talking, the snake had dropped it's head, but at the swerve of the snake stick, it rose right up again.

"Is it right there?"  Rick pointed about 5 feet to the left of the snake.

"No.  Can't you see it?" I was exasperated. How could he not see the bobbing head or follow the sound of the rattle?

"I don't have my glasses on."

"How are you supposed to smash the snake if you can't even see it?" I pointed again with the stick, which, once again, riled the snake. "There. Right there."

We spent a good five minutes waiting for Andrew to bring Rick's glasses. He didn't. The snake calmed while we stared. I crept in closer. Then closer. If I leaned forward just one more foot I could pinch the snake in my sturdy stake stick. I crept in another few inches. The snake sensed my movement and rose up again.

"I can't do it. I’m too scared." All the bravado was gone from my voice. "Let's trade jobs."

With Rick in position to grab the snake and me ready to chop, Gavin ran into the pool area to get a better look. As I was directing the kids away, Rick grabbed the snake.

He must have been nervous too because he swung the angry serpent toward me.

"What are you doing?” I squeaked as I jumped a couple of feet toward the other side of the yard.

Rick claims he did NOT swing the snake at me, but he did. He was trying to get the snake in a position that I could chop it with the shovel, but his fright caused him to fling rather than carefully move. He held the snake down on a rock while I chopped. The dull thud of the shovel didn't have much effect on the snake. I chopped and chopped at it, but it kept rattling.

Rick wasn't satisfied with the vigor of my chopping, so we traded jobs again. I held the snake while he chopped until the head was barely connected.

We figured it was mostly dead, but still didn't trust it. I kept hold of the maybe-dead snake while Rick went to get a trash bag (we can’t leave dead animals anywhere near our property because Winter brings them back to us, and decomposing snakes are especially stinky). While Rick was gone, the snake was writhing and wiggling in my grasp. I was like, “How can you still be alive?”

Rick came back and beat the rattler with a shovel until the writhing stopped. We bagged the corpse and put it in our trash bin along with the desert toad Winter was trying to get high on the day before. That one, I did kill on my own—okay Winter got a few good bites before I skewered it on a cholla.