September 22, 2023 • 31 mins
Better watch where you step. Brent's talking about snakes this week and telling stories, which is a good reason to watch where you step anyway. Hear about the proper way to carry a live rattlesnake in your mother's car and how he got caught by "The Granddaddy of all Copperheads". From charming snakes to advice on what to do when your hunting buddy gets tagged, it's a creepy crawly Friday on Meateater's This Country Life Podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Riggs
from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a while as I share
my stories and the country skills that will help you
beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
part of Meat Eater's podcast network, bringing you the best
(00:25):
outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
think I got a thing or two to teach you snakes.
I can think a few words that will get your
attention quicker than someone saying snake. Say it loudly and
(00:48):
you'll get everyone's attention. Research says that we have an
ingrained fear of them that is become natural over time.
And I don't know if I agree one hundred percent
with that, but I will bet that there's more folks
that fear them than those of us that don't. And
if you're in the woods a lot like I am,
you're gonna see them, and you order to be informed
about what you're looking at. More importantly, you need to
(01:11):
be prepared and have a plan in the back of
your mind for the ones you run up on that
you don't see. We're talking about snakes this week. But
first I'm gonna tell you a story. I was in
high school and probably about sixteen years old, and I
(01:34):
taken my mama's car to town to knock around with
my friends on a Sunday afternoon, and on the way home,
I saw a pretty good rattle snake crossing the road,
and I decided to catch him and take him home
to show my mama. Now I don't know why I
did that, but in the heat of the moment, she
was the only one I knew that I could show
the snake to. Everybody else was gone, so I stopped
(01:56):
her car and I caught him. It wasn't my first
time ca the venom of snake, not even close. There
wasn't any kind of snake that was off limits to
my rounding up skills growing up. I'd catch them all
and I never had an issue except cotton mouse had
a bad musky odor that would stink up the world,
and they did everything they could do to try to
(02:16):
bite you. But rattlesnakes and copperheads they were easy pickings.
I got out of the car, I caught him in
pretty short order. Then I got back in the car
with a four foot rattlesnake. I got to thinking that
if he got loose in there, it's going to be
a chore to get him out, and my mama would
kill me. So driving down the road, I swapped hands
from right to left, dragging that snake across my lap,
(02:39):
and I hung him out the window for the mile
ride to the house. I pulled up and went and
knocked on the door, and I hollered for Mama to
come see what I'd got. She opened the door, and
I was holding that snake with both hands, one on
his head and the other on his tail, so she
couldn't see him wiggling. And when she said, oh Lord,
where did you kill that thing? I dropped him on
(03:00):
the car port and he bawled up and went to
buzzing like somebody had kicked over a beehive. I said,
he ain't dead. She squealed and came on glued and
started swinging the room at me. I kept the snake
in between me and her in case she charged, but
she was on the steps going into the house. It
wasn't about to come down to the level where me
and the snake were. She made it clear that I
(03:22):
was to terminate that snake with extreme prejudice, and that
if she ever caught me messing with poisonous snakes again,
that she'd save the snake the trouble and killed me herself.
Three years later, and an untold number of snakes caught
and released, most that she didn't know about. Wayne Parnell
and I were driving home from my brother Tim's house
(03:44):
when we saw the largest copperhead in the history of
mankind crossing the road in front of us. We're setting
the stage for buffoonery, y'all pay attention. Sliding to a stop,
I got out of the truck to catch him. I
didn't even have to tell Wayne to stop. He knew
what was fixing to happen. And Wayne was a good
coach and a cheerleader as he stood safely behind his truck,
(04:06):
urging me on in the capture of that serpent. Not
unlike Marlon Perkins to gym on Wild Kingdom. The snake
called into his defensive position and I was moving in
to catch him. I remember exactly what I was wearing. Anybody,
I won't take a guess, bingo overalls and red high
top converse tennis shoes. You probably didn't guess that, but
(04:28):
that's what I was wearing anyway. I eased my foot
up to a spot right behind that joker's head and
slightly applied pressure. I could feel his body pin into
the gravel road, and I reached down to grab him
behind his head, and the most amazing thing happened. As
it turned out, I was standing on a small rock
(04:48):
and not the snake. The snake opened up his mouth,
wrapped his little lips around my favorite thumb on my
left hand, and stuck one of his fangs into the
knuckle joint of the previously mentioned thumb, and to what
must have been six and a half gallons of venom
into my now astonished, yet a recently more educated person.
I pulled my hand back and jumped away from that
(05:09):
snake in disbelief, and I said, Wayne, he bit me.
No he didn't, Yes, he did. Look it's bleeding. You're
gonna die. No I'm not, but that snake is Forget
the snake. We gotta get to the doctor. Get in
the truck. You're gonna die. There's nothing like encouragement in
the face of adversity. Wayne is driving like a wild man,
(05:30):
and my thumb is starting to swell. I could see
it swelling, but I was calm during the whole ordeal.
I was holding my left thumb with my right hand
and squeezing it as hard as I could to help
stop the flow of venom. I wasn't afraid of snakes,
and my doctor told me that not getting upset was
probably more beneficial to me as anything. The ride to
(05:53):
town didn't take very long, but I had to take
off my watch after a few minutes because of the swelling.
Wayne and I had pulled up to a red light.
Sitting in the lame beside us was a deputy sheriff
that both of us knew. I rolled down my window
and I asked him to contact the hospital and tell
them that we were on the way and what had happened.
He got on the radio and told us to follow him,
(06:15):
and he gave us a police escort all the way
across town. They were waiting for me when we arrived
at the emergency room a few minutes later. The snake
had bit me probably fifteen minutes ago, and my hand
was now almost twice the normal size. They stuck my
hand down in a big garbage bag of ice and
(06:35):
asked how I had gotten bit. And that's when I
realized somebody was going to write this down and my
mama was going to read it. I may have been
dang near grown, but if she decided to give me
a whooping for playing with venomous snakes, I was just
gonna have to take it. I didn't want a whooping
they hurt. A plan starts to materialize in my criminally
(06:58):
clever mind, a story so unbelievable that they would have
no choice to believe it. At that time, I was
a bona fide member of the School Brothers Union and
I chewed tobacco. I have it associated with having to
spit tobacco juice into some type of receptacle, and I
referred to those as a spit cup. And this is
(07:20):
common knowledge where I come from. So I swing my
plan into action. Doctor Chambers, Wayne and I were going
down the road and I needed a spit cup. He
pulled over on the side of the road and I
got out. I reached down for the cup lying there,
and the snake bit me. I never saw him until
he bit me. The r had been one of chaos,
(07:42):
with folks calling out procedures and this and that, and
it was like a scene out of a movie, everyone dodging,
dashing around in medically orchestration. And as soon as I
said that, a hush fell over the crowd. Everyone stopped
and looked at me like I just walked into a
saloon where my wonted poster was hanging. Doctor David Chambers
(08:04):
was my doctor and just happened to be there making
rounds when the call came in from the deputy sheriff.
I'm from a small town, like y'all know. He knew me, well,
he knew my mama. He stopped what he was doing
and he looked at me and said, you're kidding me.
I said, no, sir, that's what happened. Now. I'm sure
(08:27):
you're probably saying to yourself, why is this idiot lying
about how you got bit? This excuse is worse than
the truth. Well, you don't know my mama. The incident
involved in the rattlesnake was the last time she chewed
me out for playing with snakes. There had been countless others.
I don't think anyone was buying the spits cup excuse,
(08:48):
but it didn't matter. I just needed my mama to
buy it. Now she had to be told him. Since
I was busy getting tended to. I told Wayne to
do it. Wayne didn't want it do it. He had
been a good friend for the majority of my life
and still is growing up. He was figuratively a member
of my family. That meant that also that he had
(09:11):
no immunity when it came time for Mama to dish
out the whoopings of fact, he was well aware of.
I don't want to call her. She'll kill me too.
Come on, Wayne, somebody's got to call her and get
her up here. Mama later told me that the phone
call went like this. Mama said, hello, miss Betty, Yes,
(09:36):
this is Wayne. Hi Wayne, We're at the hospital. Oh
my god, what happened? Where's Brent? He's right here, he's
all right. Well, why are you at the hospital? Well
he uh uh, Brent kind of got snake bid. Brent
kind of got what snake bid. He's all right. They're
(09:57):
giving him some Hello. Hello, Mama was on her way.
Wayne stuck his head in the room and told me
he thought she was on her way and that she
seemed a little bit upset. Wayne disappeared, only to resurface
about the time Mama would walk in the door. Doctor
Chambers told me that it was a possibility that I
(10:18):
could lose my thumb. I asked him if i'd still
be able to shoot a shotgun. He said, well yes,
and I said, well cut it off. I don't care.
He laughed and said there would be no amputations that day,
and he didn't think it would come to that, but
it was just a possibility. You're not real smart when
you're nineteen. I would have really missed that thumb during
all these years. I remember one of the nurses taking
(10:42):
my blood pressure three times in a row. She told
the doctor that something was wrong with the blood pressure
cuff and they got another one. She said, there's something
wrong with this one too, because my blood pressure was
reading normal well. Doctor Chambers asked me if I was scared,
and I told him no, sir, and that was the truth.
I never got the least bit scared or nervous. I
didn't have enough sense to Doctor Chambers told her that
(11:05):
there was nothing wrong with the blood pressure cuff. I
was calm and that was the reason for the normal
reading that was all about to change. In Walkwayne eating
a snicker bar and drinking a coke. He was grinning,
just checking out everything that was going on. Then Mama
rounded the corner of the door like she was running
a search. One on the er. Wayne more Or lesstood
an attention and said, high, miss Betty, I'll deal with
(11:28):
you in a minute, was what she said back. This
has not started out well, Mama. I wasn't trying to
catch it, I promise. I was leaning down to get
a spit cup off the side of the road, and
the snake bit me all right out here on the thumb.
It sounded even dumber the second time I said it,
and she just looked at me. I could feel every
(11:48):
eyeball in there going back and forth from her to me,
like that scene in The Good and the Bad and
the Ugly when Clint Eastwood leave, Van Cleef and Eli
Wallach were giving each other the stink eye waiting for
so I wanted to make the first move, draw their
pistols and commenced to shooting. Watch that movie and you'll
get a sense of what the tension was in that
(12:08):
room is Everyone waited to see what she was going
to use to kill me with. After she made sure
I was going to live, she walked over to the
exam table and said, I told you that stuff was
going to kill you. I should have just went with
the truth. I was going to be wrong either way.
Doctor Chambers and the rest got a pretty good laugh
(12:29):
out of that, but I wasn't about to laugh. I
knew I was in for it. Eventually, the new would
rub off that story, The exposed holes would be exploited
by my brothers to my mother, and they would sit
back and gleefully watch as she tortured me. It all
eventually came to pass, and I was none the worse
for wear. I spent three days in the hospital. I
(12:51):
never got sick, and I still sport a scar on
the favorite thumb of my left hand. There was talk
of having to do surgery to keep my skin from
tearing because it had gotten so big. But at the
last minute, and right before they started getting the operating
room ready, the swelling started going down. That snake was
(13:12):
one of a jillion that I had caught in my youth,
and the last live venom of snake I have ever touched.
If I had listened to my mama, I wouldn't have
gotten bit that day. If I had listened to my mama,
I wouldn't have done a lot of things that I
later got in trouble, for if I had listened to
(13:33):
my mama, I wouldn't be talking to you now. She
told me that hunting, fishing and running my mouth about
it wouldn't get me anywhere. Hey mama, what's the name
of your podcast? Is she going to kill me for
that one? And that's just how that happened. September is
(14:02):
a busy time in Arkansas and in other parts of
the country as well. Leaves are starting to turn loose,
elk or bugling bears are fattening it up prepping for
the winter. White tails have lost the velvet off their antlers,
and the creepy crawleys are at the peak of their activity.
And of all those majestic creatures and activities I just mentioned,
(14:23):
we're going to talk about snakes. First of all, we
have six venomous snakes in Arkansas. The Eastern Copperhead, that
that one that we just talked about, Then there's the
Northern cotton Mouth. It's been my experience as these jokers
have the worst disposition of any of them. Allow me
to elaborate. Back in the eighties, it was in April
(14:46):
and the opening morning and turkey season, and I was
so fired up to go that when I stepped out
of my truck to walk down into the bottoms where
I was going to listen, I was about two hours early.
It was way before daylight, and the only life I
had with me was a little pen light that was
so dim he dang there. Had to strike a match
beside it to see if it was on. I stuck
(15:08):
it back in my pocket, but I couldn't set it
the truck. I had to go, so, taking my time
because I had plenty of it, I made my way
slowly down through the woods in the dark, navigating by
a sliver of moonlight and just using my face as
a limb detector. It was a very effective but somewhat
painful way to find out where the limbs were. But
(15:29):
I'd made that trip a million times before and I
knew the way, so I knew that if I could
just keep from jobbing both of my eyes out or
ripping the ears off the side of my head, that
when I got close to steep Bank Creek and heard
the water running over the shallow gravel crossing, that I'd
just wait there until goblin time came in the dark. Eventually,
(15:52):
but not without a few stumbles and abrasions. I heard
water running through that show where I'd planned to listen from,
and I stopped in a small opening in the trees.
I dug around for that little pen light, and when
I did, I found an extra battery. I loaded that
rascal and fired it up, and it was like I
had harnessed the power of the sun. After my eyes
had gotten so acclimated the darkness and tree bark, I
(16:16):
also realized that the creek was louder than I had
originally thought it would be, so I was going to
have to relocate a little ways away from it when
gobling time came, so I wouldn't miss a far away gobble.
Because of that record, I knew that I had over
an hour before I needed to move, so I turned
on my light and I looked toward that creek that
was fifteen yards away. The creek was about ten feet wide,
(16:39):
and laying on the opposite bank from where I was
looking was a big cotton mouth. He was cooled up
and striking into the riffles of the water. It was weird,
and I ain't never seen that before. So I took
a couple of steps closer, and I saw that there
was a bunch of little brim going through that shoal,
and he was trying to catch him one. I bet
I washed him, striking four or five fish and didn't
(17:01):
catch a one. I grew weary of watching him strike out.
It was like watching all the out takes on National
Geographic when of them palace get away from the cheetah.
I want to see something get in time to change
the channel. I turned my light off and went back
to stating in the dark, looking at the stars, minding
my own business and waiting on daylight. I never gave
(17:23):
him another thought, for I don't know it must have
been ten fifteen minutes. Fella can only do so much
in the dark past the time, so I decided to
turn my little light back home to see what was
happening on the snake channel. I shined my light over
thereby Elvis had left the building. The little fish were
still shooting through the rabbits, but the cotton mouth he
was nowhere to be seen. I was a little disappointed
(17:46):
that I hadn't kept watching him, because he'd obviously caught
one and took off. That had been pretty cool to see.
I shined left and right up and down the bank,
looking for him, but I didn't seem And then, for
some unknown reasoned that pen light at my feet. In
less than a foot away from me was that cotton mouth,
all cold up with his mouth wide open. He looked
(18:10):
like he weighed ninety two pounds and his mouth was
big enough to swallow us. Sit in here and her nest.
I don't know how high I jumped or how high
I squealed, but both of them were way up there,
and when I came down, I monkey stomped that joker
all over that little clear and until he didn't favor
a drink of water. I don't know why he came
to where I was, but he did. I've had them
(18:33):
come to where I was before, when I was frog
gigging or running the trout line at night with a spotlight. Regardless,
they deserved some respect in space, and apparently I'd failed
to one or both of them. Now, doing some research
for this episode, I kept reading where contrary to what
I just said, cotton mouths aren't overly aggressive. Well, okay,
(18:55):
mister snake expert, maybe they're just really curious and like
to show off their fans. Where's doctor Chris Jenkins when
I need him? Speaking? To him. He's got a podcast
called Snake Talk, and if snakes are your thing, it's
very informative and you should check it out now. In
all seriousness, that snake was between two and twelve feet long.
(19:18):
Not really, he was about two and a half feet long.
I don't think he was attacking me because he had
every opportunity to bite me before I ever turned my
light on looking for him. And there's no telling how
long he'd been there. Either he was just going my
way or was defending his fishing on who knows. He
only did three things wrong. He scared me down near
(19:40):
to death, violated the perimeter of my personal space, and
he didn't wear a helmet, all of which were not
my phone. All right, that's two of them, cotton mouse
and copperheads. We still got three kinds of rattlesnakes. That's
(20:02):
Western diamondbacks, timber rattlesnakes, and pigmy rattlesnakes. That's the little fellow.
Not sure if I've ever even seen a diamondback, but
I've seen a box car load of timber rattlers. They
were very prevalent where I grew up. But I've never
had a bad experience with rattlesnakes. I'd run up on
them in the woods and could count on probably one
(20:23):
hand how many times I've ever heard them rattle before
I saw him. I don't go around looking for them,
but when I'm in places where they like to be,
I guess I'm subconsciously more observant. Diamondbacks are over in
the western in the southwestern corner of Arkansas, and I
just wasn't in my stomping grounds. Had a fellow in
(20:44):
the neighborhood knock on my door one day. It was
September in twoenty and nineteen. When I answered the door,
I recognized him from seeing him drive by the house,
but I'd never talked to him before, knew which house
he lived in. I opened the door, and the first
thing out of his mouth was do you have a gun? Well?
That got my spidy senses tingling, and I took a
(21:07):
step closer to him and quickly looked to see if
he had one in his hands or on his person.
Satisfied he didn't, and that I was now close enough
to throw punch him off my porch if I needed to,
I said, do I need one? That's when he told
me about the big rattlesnake. He'd seen him a driveway.
You sure it was a rattlesnake. Oh yeah, he's a
(21:28):
big one. Well, I figured he saw a snake, but
I doubted he'd seen a rattlesnake. I'd been here for
nine years and ain't never seen one. So I followed
him outside to look at the snake and was about
to give him a lesson on snake id. I didn't
bother bringing a gun when we walked him. When we
walked to the mailbox, he pointed it to nearly five
(21:49):
foot rattlesnake coled up behind it. I retreated for the
twenty two You can check my Instagram and see the
picture of him the snake, not the neighbor. Now, I
want to say, for the record, I ain't bad about
killing snakes. They serve a purpose, and he was just
out making a living. Anything whose diet has rats in
(22:09):
it is my friend, because I give no quarter to rats. Also,
for the record, there's no difference in my mind when
it comes to rats and mice. Rats or rats and
mice are small rats. But he can't make a living
in my yard when I got kids and grandkids running around.
Life is hard it's harder if you're a rattlesnake and
you trespass at Brent's house, a king snake or any
(22:31):
other non venomous snake would have got a free pass anyway,
That pigmy rattlesnake is as common as crickets. And lastly
there's the Texas coral snake, of which I have only
seen one in my lifetime. So by sheer law of
averages and in my experience in Arkansas and in similar environments,
if you come across a venom of snake, you're gonna
(22:52):
be bumping into copperheads, cotton mouths, and timber rattlers more
than any other. Like when I got bit, you seek
medical attention at once, But what about your dog? When
I'm coon hunting, I'm purposely sending Whaling down creek and
slew edges where the bandidos roam, but also overlaps where
the snakes live and operate too. It's bound to happen
(23:14):
at some juncture, and when it does, you may not
notice the effects immediately. First thing I do when I
call Whaling in to go home is give him a
good inspection before I load him up. When I've got
him on the tailgate and removing his track and collar.
I'm inspecting him for any damages he may have incurred
while out hunting. When I get him home to unload
him and put him up, I do the same thing
(23:34):
again on the tailgate from his grill to his exhaust pipe.
I'm looking him over and first thing. The next morning,
when I go out to feed him, I do the
same thing again. If I see some swelling, that's when
I start my diagnosis. Me and Rex were hunting Whaling
and his dog Shadow one night and they were blowing
a coon track up in a big hardwood flat in
(23:55):
the Cache River bottoms. Walking to where they were treed,
we heard Shadow yep like he had something had hurt him,
and then he went back to tree. Rex asked me
if I heard that, and the one I said yes,
he said, I think Shadow just got snake bit. We
went on into the tree and they'd split tree at
about thirty yards apart, and both of them had a coon.
(24:16):
It was August and Primo Cottonmouth Country. We checked him
over and we didn't see any issues. But the next
morning Rex called me and said, well, it looks like
Shadow got bit. His right front foot is about twice
the size as it should be. He sent me a
picture of it. It looked like he's wearing a boxing
glove on it. Long story short, it wasn't a snake
(24:37):
bite at all. It was a thorn off a black
locust tree that he'd stepped on. And let me tell you,
those things hurt. The thorns of the Robenia suiticacia commonly
called the black locust tree or toxic and can call
swelling and the cross which is tissue death a saw
that won't heal. The vet couldn't find anything punctures, so
(24:59):
he make sure hed his foot to see if he'd
broken it, and found the thorn, and then he removed it.
A few days of antibiotics and Shadow was ready to
hunt again. So, if you have a dog that gets
bitten by a venomous snake, and you're fortunate enough to
know what kind it is, that's gonna dictate what your
next steps are. I call my good friend and serial
(25:20):
duck killer doctor Jonathan Bradshaw, DVM, the Sporting Dog Veterinarian.
If y'all ain't following him on Instagram, you are to be.
He's like a mild mannered Clark Kent going about his
day to life in the city limits of Dogopolis until
there's a need for heroics, and as quick as a hiccup,
he's in a phone booth, putting on his cape and
(25:41):
flying off to save the day. For real, He's always
posting stuff on there about health care for you dogs
that you'd normally have to pay for. Anyway, I hemmed
him up and posed this question to him. First of all,
here's the disclaimer. Good lord, the times that we live in, y'all,
don't be jamming me of the dock up in the
(26:03):
future saying y'all's device killed my dog. Well, ain't nobody
got time for that. If you're concerned about your dog's health,
told him to the vet. End the disclaimer. Now here's
the question and his answer, Doc, do you have a
general rule about treating snake bites and dogs? If it's
(26:23):
a big dog and a little snake, do nothing? Or
a little dog and a big snake do you seek
treatment to me? Here's where snake idea comes in. It's
very important to know the difference. Both cotton mouth and
rattlesnake venoms are hematoxic and cast circulatory system and muscle
tissue damage, including the crosis, but the rattlesnake venom is
(26:45):
much more potent than the cotton mouth Enough rambling, Brent,
What did the guy who knows sake? This is what
he said, Unless it's a rattlesnake, I don't really worry
about it. Benadrill is nice to give. Steroids are nice
to give, but antibiotics sometimes really saved the day a
few days down the road when infection from the bite
(27:06):
sets in or sluggish blood flow settles in. Here's what
he said about rattlesnakes. If it's a rattlesnake, any venom
and extreme supportive care period. Now there's going to be
somebody send me a message saying you don't need no
vent to treat a snake bite. My dog got bit
(27:27):
by a sixteen foot rattlesnake and we didn't do nothing
and he was all right. Well, y'all also don't need
a spoon to eat soup with, but it sure makes
it less messy when you use one. Please don't send
me that message or a picture of you eating soup
without a spoon. Knowing the environment you're hunting in and
what venom of snakes most likely in habit the area,
(27:48):
will help you determine what level of care you give me.
I'm going to err on the side of caution every
time you you do what you want. Snakes are part
of the landscape, and the struggle to coexists with the
humanity started when that joker talked to even to taking
a bite out of that apple. Dang girl, what was
you thinking? Now? That was the first incident when a
(28:10):
serpent caused havoc on the planet. But Eve made that choice.
The snake didn't make her eat it. Fast forward to
when I was nineteen and not more or less him
the copper head up so I could stick my thumb
in his mouth. He didn't make me do that. It
was my choice, And like that old dude set in
that cave on Indiana Jones, I chose poorly. A high
(28:35):
percentage of snake bites a curve when we're messing with him.
If you leave them alone, they're more liable to leave
you alone. One more story about snakes and dogs. My
brother Tim had a black lab that I've talked about
on here before. His name was Zach and he was
quite a dog. I loved that rascal. Everyone loved him
and he loved everyone. But he hated snakes, and this
(28:59):
was no entry level hate either. This dude was a
Tier one snake hater. He hated them so much, especially rattlesnakes,
that he would dig them up either the den, kill them,
and bring them to my brother's porch and offer them
up as a testimony of his hatred for old Jake
no shoulders. He wasn't alone in this endeavor either. He
(29:20):
had an accomplice, a half Boston Terrier and half Blue
Healer named Fred. Don't even ask how that cross came about.
Zach was laid back in about the coolest dog you
have ever seen. His expressions reminded me of Eore on
Winnie the Pooh. That dude was the epitome of chill.
(29:40):
Fred was not. Fred was a hot wire And I'm
not sure if Fred was nervous or if he was
just really quick. But my brother is a gunsmith, and
on top of repairing guns and test firing them, we
would shoot skeet and everything else around there. We was
always shooting at something whenever Zach and Fred were around.
Every time time someone pulled the trigger and fired a shot,
(30:02):
for ever to body Zack right in the rear end.
Only Zack and nobody knew what. But back to the snakes.
Tim told me it was a common occurrence to hear
something on the porch and open the door to see
Zach and Fred standing there, Zack holding a dead rattlesnake
in his mouth, and he and Fred both looking like
they just survived five rounds with Mike Tyson. Tim said,
(30:25):
at first, as Zack said, it would look like a basketball,
but eventually, after years of Zach's campaign against snakes, that
the swelling wouldn't amount to much at all. It's pretty
crazy when you think about it. Now. Did he build
up a tolerance to the venom? He sure didn't build
up a tolerance to their presence. Zach lived a long time,
but I don't remember what happened to Fred. He probably
(30:47):
wound up in the nervous hospital. He was definitely a
good prospect for it. Anyway, Snakes are your challenged this week.
Do some paperwork and learn about the snakes in your
area and have a plan on what to do if
you or your dog gets bitten. I see people on
social media saying that the only good snake is a
(31:07):
dead snake. Well that ain't true. They serve a purpose
and they have a place. It's usually the best when
that place is over yonder, but they do have a place.
Be alert when you head to the mailbox. You never
know I might be lurking there. This is Brent Reeves
(31:29):
signing off. Y'all be careful.
Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Riggs
from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a while as I share
my stories and the country skills that will help you
beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
part of Meat Eater's podcast network, bringing you the best
(00:25):
outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
think I got a thing or two to teach you snakes.
I can think a few words that will get your
attention quicker than someone saying snake. Say it loudly and
(00:48):
you'll get everyone's attention. Research says that we have an
ingrained fear of them that is become natural over time.
And I don't know if I agree one hundred percent
with that, but I will bet that there's more folks
that fear them than those of us that don't. And
if you're in the woods a lot like I am,
you're gonna see them, and you order to be informed
about what you're looking at. More importantly, you need to
(01:11):
be prepared and have a plan in the back of
your mind for the ones you run up on that
you don't see. We're talking about snakes this week. But
first I'm gonna tell you a story. I was in
high school and probably about sixteen years old, and I
(01:34):
taken my mama's car to town to knock around with
my friends on a Sunday afternoon, and on the way home,
I saw a pretty good rattle snake crossing the road,
and I decided to catch him and take him home
to show my mama. Now I don't know why I
did that, but in the heat of the moment, she
was the only one I knew that I could show
the snake to. Everybody else was gone, so I stopped
(01:56):
her car and I caught him. It wasn't my first
time ca the venom of snake, not even close. There
wasn't any kind of snake that was off limits to
my rounding up skills growing up. I'd catch them all
and I never had an issue except cotton mouse had
a bad musky odor that would stink up the world,
and they did everything they could do to try to
(02:16):
bite you. But rattlesnakes and copperheads they were easy pickings.
I got out of the car, I caught him in
pretty short order. Then I got back in the car
with a four foot rattlesnake. I got to thinking that
if he got loose in there, it's going to be
a chore to get him out, and my mama would
kill me. So driving down the road, I swapped hands
from right to left, dragging that snake across my lap,
(02:39):
and I hung him out the window for the mile
ride to the house. I pulled up and went and
knocked on the door, and I hollered for Mama to
come see what I'd got. She opened the door, and
I was holding that snake with both hands, one on
his head and the other on his tail, so she
couldn't see him wiggling. And when she said, oh Lord,
where did you kill that thing? I dropped him on
(03:00):
the car port and he bawled up and went to
buzzing like somebody had kicked over a beehive. I said,
he ain't dead. She squealed and came on glued and
started swinging the room at me. I kept the snake
in between me and her in case she charged, but
she was on the steps going into the house. It
wasn't about to come down to the level where me
and the snake were. She made it clear that I
(03:22):
was to terminate that snake with extreme prejudice, and that
if she ever caught me messing with poisonous snakes again,
that she'd save the snake the trouble and killed me herself.
Three years later, and an untold number of snakes caught
and released, most that she didn't know about. Wayne Parnell
and I were driving home from my brother Tim's house
(03:44):
when we saw the largest copperhead in the history of
mankind crossing the road in front of us. We're setting
the stage for buffoonery, y'all pay attention. Sliding to a stop,
I got out of the truck to catch him. I
didn't even have to tell Wayne to stop. He knew
what was fixing to happen. And Wayne was a good
coach and a cheerleader as he stood safely behind his truck,
(04:06):
urging me on in the capture of that serpent. Not
unlike Marlon Perkins to gym on Wild Kingdom. The snake
called into his defensive position and I was moving in
to catch him. I remember exactly what I was wearing. Anybody,
I won't take a guess, bingo overalls and red high
top converse tennis shoes. You probably didn't guess that, but
(04:28):
that's what I was wearing anyway. I eased my foot
up to a spot right behind that joker's head and
slightly applied pressure. I could feel his body pin into
the gravel road, and I reached down to grab him
behind his head, and the most amazing thing happened. As
it turned out, I was standing on a small rock
(04:48):
and not the snake. The snake opened up his mouth,
wrapped his little lips around my favorite thumb on my
left hand, and stuck one of his fangs into the
knuckle joint of the previously mentioned thumb, and to what
must have been six and a half gallons of venom
into my now astonished, yet a recently more educated person.
I pulled my hand back and jumped away from that
(05:09):
snake in disbelief, and I said, Wayne, he bit me.
No he didn't, Yes, he did. Look it's bleeding. You're
gonna die. No I'm not, but that snake is Forget
the snake. We gotta get to the doctor. Get in
the truck. You're gonna die. There's nothing like encouragement in
the face of adversity. Wayne is driving like a wild man,
(05:30):
and my thumb is starting to swell. I could see
it swelling, but I was calm during the whole ordeal.
I was holding my left thumb with my right hand
and squeezing it as hard as I could to help
stop the flow of venom. I wasn't afraid of snakes,
and my doctor told me that not getting upset was
probably more beneficial to me as anything. The ride to
(05:53):
town didn't take very long, but I had to take
off my watch after a few minutes because of the swelling.
Wayne and I had pulled up to a red light.
Sitting in the lame beside us was a deputy sheriff
that both of us knew. I rolled down my window
and I asked him to contact the hospital and tell
them that we were on the way and what had happened.
He got on the radio and told us to follow him,
(06:15):
and he gave us a police escort all the way
across town. They were waiting for me when we arrived
at the emergency room a few minutes later. The snake
had bit me probably fifteen minutes ago, and my hand
was now almost twice the normal size. They stuck my
hand down in a big garbage bag of ice and
(06:35):
asked how I had gotten bit. And that's when I
realized somebody was going to write this down and my
mama was going to read it. I may have been
dang near grown, but if she decided to give me
a whooping for playing with venomous snakes, I was just
gonna have to take it. I didn't want a whooping
they hurt. A plan starts to materialize in my criminally
(06:58):
clever mind, a story so unbelievable that they would have
no choice to believe it. At that time, I was
a bona fide member of the School Brothers Union and
I chewed tobacco. I have it associated with having to
spit tobacco juice into some type of receptacle, and I
referred to those as a spit cup. And this is
(07:20):
common knowledge where I come from. So I swing my
plan into action. Doctor Chambers, Wayne and I were going
down the road and I needed a spit cup. He
pulled over on the side of the road and I
got out. I reached down for the cup lying there,
and the snake bit me. I never saw him until
he bit me. The r had been one of chaos,
(07:42):
with folks calling out procedures and this and that, and
it was like a scene out of a movie, everyone dodging,
dashing around in medically orchestration. And as soon as I
said that, a hush fell over the crowd. Everyone stopped
and looked at me like I just walked into a
saloon where my wonted poster was hanging. Doctor David Chambers
(08:04):
was my doctor and just happened to be there making
rounds when the call came in from the deputy sheriff.
I'm from a small town, like y'all know. He knew me, well,
he knew my mama. He stopped what he was doing
and he looked at me and said, you're kidding me.
I said, no, sir, that's what happened. Now. I'm sure
(08:27):
you're probably saying to yourself, why is this idiot lying
about how you got bit? This excuse is worse than
the truth. Well, you don't know my mama. The incident
involved in the rattlesnake was the last time she chewed
me out for playing with snakes. There had been countless others.
I don't think anyone was buying the spits cup excuse,
(08:48):
but it didn't matter. I just needed my mama to
buy it. Now she had to be told him. Since
I was busy getting tended to. I told Wayne to
do it. Wayne didn't want it do it. He had
been a good friend for the majority of my life
and still is growing up. He was figuratively a member
of my family. That meant that also that he had
(09:11):
no immunity when it came time for Mama to dish
out the whoopings of fact, he was well aware of.
I don't want to call her. She'll kill me too.
Come on, Wayne, somebody's got to call her and get
her up here. Mama later told me that the phone
call went like this. Mama said, hello, miss Betty, Yes,
(09:36):
this is Wayne. Hi Wayne, We're at the hospital. Oh
my god, what happened? Where's Brent? He's right here, he's
all right. Well, why are you at the hospital? Well
he uh uh, Brent kind of got snake bid. Brent
kind of got what snake bid. He's all right. They're
(09:57):
giving him some Hello. Hello, Mama was on her way.
Wayne stuck his head in the room and told me
he thought she was on her way and that she
seemed a little bit upset. Wayne disappeared, only to resurface
about the time Mama would walk in the door. Doctor
Chambers told me that it was a possibility that I
(10:18):
could lose my thumb. I asked him if i'd still
be able to shoot a shotgun. He said, well yes,
and I said, well cut it off. I don't care.
He laughed and said there would be no amputations that day,
and he didn't think it would come to that, but
it was just a possibility. You're not real smart when
you're nineteen. I would have really missed that thumb during
all these years. I remember one of the nurses taking
(10:42):
my blood pressure three times in a row. She told
the doctor that something was wrong with the blood pressure
cuff and they got another one. She said, there's something
wrong with this one too, because my blood pressure was
reading normal well. Doctor Chambers asked me if I was scared,
and I told him no, sir, and that was the truth.
I never got the least bit scared or nervous. I
didn't have enough sense to Doctor Chambers told her that
(11:05):
there was nothing wrong with the blood pressure cuff. I
was calm and that was the reason for the normal
reading that was all about to change. In Walkwayne eating
a snicker bar and drinking a coke. He was grinning,
just checking out everything that was going on. Then Mama
rounded the corner of the door like she was running
a search. One on the er. Wayne more Or lesstood
an attention and said, high, miss Betty, I'll deal with
(11:28):
you in a minute, was what she said back. This
has not started out well, Mama. I wasn't trying to
catch it, I promise. I was leaning down to get
a spit cup off the side of the road, and
the snake bit me all right out here on the thumb.
It sounded even dumber the second time I said it,
and she just looked at me. I could feel every
(11:48):
eyeball in there going back and forth from her to me,
like that scene in The Good and the Bad and
the Ugly when Clint Eastwood leave, Van Cleef and Eli
Wallach were giving each other the stink eye waiting for
so I wanted to make the first move, draw their
pistols and commenced to shooting. Watch that movie and you'll
get a sense of what the tension was in that
(12:08):
room is Everyone waited to see what she was going
to use to kill me with. After she made sure
I was going to live, she walked over to the
exam table and said, I told you that stuff was
going to kill you. I should have just went with
the truth. I was going to be wrong either way.
Doctor Chambers and the rest got a pretty good laugh
(12:29):
out of that, but I wasn't about to laugh. I
knew I was in for it. Eventually, the new would
rub off that story, The exposed holes would be exploited
by my brothers to my mother, and they would sit
back and gleefully watch as she tortured me. It all
eventually came to pass, and I was none the worse
for wear. I spent three days in the hospital. I
(12:51):
never got sick, and I still sport a scar on
the favorite thumb of my left hand. There was talk
of having to do surgery to keep my skin from
tearing because it had gotten so big. But at the
last minute, and right before they started getting the operating
room ready, the swelling started going down. That snake was
(13:12):
one of a jillion that I had caught in my youth,
and the last live venom of snake I have ever touched.
If I had listened to my mama, I wouldn't have
gotten bit that day. If I had listened to my mama,
I wouldn't have done a lot of things that I
later got in trouble, for if I had listened to
(13:33):
my mama, I wouldn't be talking to you now. She
told me that hunting, fishing and running my mouth about
it wouldn't get me anywhere. Hey mama, what's the name
of your podcast? Is she going to kill me for
that one? And that's just how that happened. September is
(14:02):
a busy time in Arkansas and in other parts of
the country as well. Leaves are starting to turn loose,
elk or bugling bears are fattening it up prepping for
the winter. White tails have lost the velvet off their antlers,
and the creepy crawleys are at the peak of their activity.
And of all those majestic creatures and activities I just mentioned,
(14:23):
we're going to talk about snakes. First of all, we
have six venomous snakes in Arkansas. The Eastern Copperhead, that
that one that we just talked about, Then there's the
Northern cotton Mouth. It's been my experience as these jokers
have the worst disposition of any of them. Allow me
to elaborate. Back in the eighties, it was in April
(14:46):
and the opening morning and turkey season, and I was
so fired up to go that when I stepped out
of my truck to walk down into the bottoms where
I was going to listen, I was about two hours early.
It was way before daylight, and the only life I
had with me was a little pen light that was
so dim he dang there. Had to strike a match
beside it to see if it was on. I stuck
(15:08):
it back in my pocket, but I couldn't set it
the truck. I had to go, so, taking my time
because I had plenty of it, I made my way
slowly down through the woods in the dark, navigating by
a sliver of moonlight and just using my face as
a limb detector. It was a very effective but somewhat
painful way to find out where the limbs were. But
(15:29):
I'd made that trip a million times before and I
knew the way, so I knew that if I could
just keep from jobbing both of my eyes out or
ripping the ears off the side of my head, that
when I got close to steep Bank Creek and heard
the water running over the shallow gravel crossing, that I'd
just wait there until goblin time came in the dark. Eventually,
(15:52):
but not without a few stumbles and abrasions. I heard
water running through that show where I'd planned to listen from,
and I stopped in a small opening in the trees.
I dug around for that little pen light, and when
I did, I found an extra battery. I loaded that
rascal and fired it up, and it was like I
had harnessed the power of the sun. After my eyes
had gotten so acclimated the darkness and tree bark, I
(16:16):
also realized that the creek was louder than I had
originally thought it would be, so I was going to
have to relocate a little ways away from it when
gobling time came, so I wouldn't miss a far away gobble.
Because of that record, I knew that I had over
an hour before I needed to move, so I turned
on my light and I looked toward that creek that
was fifteen yards away. The creek was about ten feet wide,
(16:39):
and laying on the opposite bank from where I was
looking was a big cotton mouth. He was cooled up
and striking into the riffles of the water. It was weird,
and I ain't never seen that before. So I took
a couple of steps closer, and I saw that there
was a bunch of little brim going through that shoal,
and he was trying to catch him one. I bet
I washed him, striking four or five fish and didn't
(17:01):
catch a one. I grew weary of watching him strike out.
It was like watching all the out takes on National
Geographic when of them palace get away from the cheetah.
I want to see something get in time to change
the channel. I turned my light off and went back
to stating in the dark, looking at the stars, minding
my own business and waiting on daylight. I never gave
(17:23):
him another thought, for I don't know it must have
been ten fifteen minutes. Fella can only do so much
in the dark past the time, so I decided to
turn my little light back home to see what was
happening on the snake channel. I shined my light over
thereby Elvis had left the building. The little fish were
still shooting through the rabbits, but the cotton mouth he
was nowhere to be seen. I was a little disappointed
(17:46):
that I hadn't kept watching him, because he'd obviously caught
one and took off. That had been pretty cool to see.
I shined left and right up and down the bank,
looking for him, but I didn't seem And then, for
some unknown reasoned that pen light at my feet. In
less than a foot away from me was that cotton mouth,
all cold up with his mouth wide open. He looked
(18:10):
like he weighed ninety two pounds and his mouth was
big enough to swallow us. Sit in here and her nest.
I don't know how high I jumped or how high
I squealed, but both of them were way up there,
and when I came down, I monkey stomped that joker
all over that little clear and until he didn't favor
a drink of water. I don't know why he came
to where I was, but he did. I've had them
(18:33):
come to where I was before, when I was frog
gigging or running the trout line at night with a spotlight. Regardless,
they deserved some respect in space, and apparently I'd failed
to one or both of them. Now, doing some research
for this episode, I kept reading where contrary to what
I just said, cotton mouths aren't overly aggressive. Well, okay,
(18:55):
mister snake expert, maybe they're just really curious and like
to show off their fans. Where's doctor Chris Jenkins when
I need him? Speaking? To him. He's got a podcast
called Snake Talk, and if snakes are your thing, it's
very informative and you should check it out now. In
all seriousness, that snake was between two and twelve feet long.
(19:18):
Not really, he was about two and a half feet long.
I don't think he was attacking me because he had
every opportunity to bite me before I ever turned my
light on looking for him. And there's no telling how
long he'd been there. Either he was just going my
way or was defending his fishing on who knows. He
only did three things wrong. He scared me down near
(19:40):
to death, violated the perimeter of my personal space, and
he didn't wear a helmet, all of which were not
my phone. All right, that's two of them, cotton mouse
and copperheads. We still got three kinds of rattlesnakes. That's
(20:02):
Western diamondbacks, timber rattlesnakes, and pigmy rattlesnakes. That's the little fellow.
Not sure if I've ever even seen a diamondback, but
I've seen a box car load of timber rattlers. They
were very prevalent where I grew up. But I've never
had a bad experience with rattlesnakes. I'd run up on
them in the woods and could count on probably one
(20:23):
hand how many times I've ever heard them rattle before
I saw him. I don't go around looking for them,
but when I'm in places where they like to be,
I guess I'm subconsciously more observant. Diamondbacks are over in
the western in the southwestern corner of Arkansas, and I
just wasn't in my stomping grounds. Had a fellow in
(20:44):
the neighborhood knock on my door one day. It was
September in twoenty and nineteen. When I answered the door,
I recognized him from seeing him drive by the house,
but I'd never talked to him before, knew which house
he lived in. I opened the door, and the first
thing out of his mouth was do you have a gun? Well?
That got my spidy senses tingling, and I took a
(21:07):
step closer to him and quickly looked to see if
he had one in his hands or on his person.
Satisfied he didn't, and that I was now close enough
to throw punch him off my porch if I needed to,
I said, do I need one? That's when he told
me about the big rattlesnake. He'd seen him a driveway.
You sure it was a rattlesnake. Oh yeah, he's a
(21:28):
big one. Well, I figured he saw a snake, but
I doubted he'd seen a rattlesnake. I'd been here for
nine years and ain't never seen one. So I followed
him outside to look at the snake and was about
to give him a lesson on snake id. I didn't
bother bringing a gun when we walked him. When we
walked to the mailbox, he pointed it to nearly five
(21:49):
foot rattlesnake coled up behind it. I retreated for the
twenty two You can check my Instagram and see the
picture of him the snake, not the neighbor. Now, I
want to say, for the record, I ain't bad about
killing snakes. They serve a purpose, and he was just
out making a living. Anything whose diet has rats in
(22:09):
it is my friend, because I give no quarter to rats. Also,
for the record, there's no difference in my mind when
it comes to rats and mice. Rats or rats and
mice are small rats. But he can't make a living
in my yard when I got kids and grandkids running around.
Life is hard it's harder if you're a rattlesnake and
you trespass at Brent's house, a king snake or any
(22:31):
other non venomous snake would have got a free pass anyway,
That pigmy rattlesnake is as common as crickets. And lastly
there's the Texas coral snake, of which I have only
seen one in my lifetime. So by sheer law of
averages and in my experience in Arkansas and in similar environments,
if you come across a venom of snake, you're gonna
(22:52):
be bumping into copperheads, cotton mouths, and timber rattlers more
than any other. Like when I got bit, you seek
medical attention at once, But what about your dog? When
I'm coon hunting, I'm purposely sending Whaling down creek and
slew edges where the bandidos roam, but also overlaps where
the snakes live and operate too. It's bound to happen
(23:14):
at some juncture, and when it does, you may not
notice the effects immediately. First thing I do when I
call Whaling in to go home is give him a
good inspection before I load him up. When I've got
him on the tailgate and removing his track and collar.
I'm inspecting him for any damages he may have incurred
while out hunting. When I get him home to unload
him and put him up, I do the same thing
(23:34):
again on the tailgate from his grill to his exhaust pipe.
I'm looking him over and first thing. The next morning,
when I go out to feed him, I do the
same thing again. If I see some swelling, that's when
I start my diagnosis. Me and Rex were hunting Whaling
and his dog Shadow one night and they were blowing
a coon track up in a big hardwood flat in
(23:55):
the Cache River bottoms. Walking to where they were treed,
we heard Shadow yep like he had something had hurt him,
and then he went back to tree. Rex asked me
if I heard that, and the one I said yes,
he said, I think Shadow just got snake bit. We
went on into the tree and they'd split tree at
about thirty yards apart, and both of them had a coon.
(24:16):
It was August and Primo Cottonmouth Country. We checked him
over and we didn't see any issues. But the next
morning Rex called me and said, well, it looks like
Shadow got bit. His right front foot is about twice
the size as it should be. He sent me a
picture of it. It looked like he's wearing a boxing
glove on it. Long story short, it wasn't a snake
(24:37):
bite at all. It was a thorn off a black
locust tree that he'd stepped on. And let me tell you,
those things hurt. The thorns of the Robenia suiticacia commonly
called the black locust tree or toxic and can call
swelling and the cross which is tissue death a saw
that won't heal. The vet couldn't find anything punctures, so
(24:59):
he make sure hed his foot to see if he'd
broken it, and found the thorn, and then he removed it.
A few days of antibiotics and Shadow was ready to
hunt again. So, if you have a dog that gets
bitten by a venomous snake, and you're fortunate enough to
know what kind it is, that's gonna dictate what your
next steps are. I call my good friend and serial
(25:20):
duck killer doctor Jonathan Bradshaw, DVM, the Sporting Dog Veterinarian.
If y'all ain't following him on Instagram, you are to be.
He's like a mild mannered Clark Kent going about his
day to life in the city limits of Dogopolis until
there's a need for heroics, and as quick as a hiccup,
he's in a phone booth, putting on his cape and
(25:41):
flying off to save the day. For real, He's always
posting stuff on there about health care for you dogs
that you'd normally have to pay for. Anyway, I hemmed
him up and posed this question to him. First of all,
here's the disclaimer. Good lord, the times that we live in, y'all,
don't be jamming me of the dock up in the
(26:03):
future saying y'all's device killed my dog. Well, ain't nobody
got time for that. If you're concerned about your dog's health,
told him to the vet. End the disclaimer. Now here's
the question and his answer, Doc, do you have a
general rule about treating snake bites and dogs? If it's
(26:23):
a big dog and a little snake, do nothing? Or
a little dog and a big snake do you seek
treatment to me? Here's where snake idea comes in. It's
very important to know the difference. Both cotton mouth and
rattlesnake venoms are hematoxic and cast circulatory system and muscle
tissue damage, including the crosis, but the rattlesnake venom is
(26:45):
much more potent than the cotton mouth Enough rambling, Brent,
What did the guy who knows sake? This is what
he said, Unless it's a rattlesnake, I don't really worry
about it. Benadrill is nice to give. Steroids are nice
to give, but antibiotics sometimes really saved the day a
few days down the road when infection from the bite
(27:06):
sets in or sluggish blood flow settles in. Here's what
he said about rattlesnakes. If it's a rattlesnake, any venom
and extreme supportive care period. Now there's going to be
somebody send me a message saying you don't need no
vent to treat a snake bite. My dog got bit
(27:27):
by a sixteen foot rattlesnake and we didn't do nothing
and he was all right. Well, y'all also don't need
a spoon to eat soup with, but it sure makes
it less messy when you use one. Please don't send
me that message or a picture of you eating soup
without a spoon. Knowing the environment you're hunting in and
what venom of snakes most likely in habit the area,
(27:48):
will help you determine what level of care you give me.
I'm going to err on the side of caution every
time you you do what you want. Snakes are part
of the landscape, and the struggle to coexists with the
humanity started when that joker talked to even to taking
a bite out of that apple. Dang girl, what was
you thinking? Now? That was the first incident when a
(28:10):
serpent caused havoc on the planet. But Eve made that choice.
The snake didn't make her eat it. Fast forward to
when I was nineteen and not more or less him
the copper head up so I could stick my thumb
in his mouth. He didn't make me do that. It
was my choice, And like that old dude set in
that cave on Indiana Jones, I chose poorly. A high
(28:35):
percentage of snake bites a curve when we're messing with him.
If you leave them alone, they're more liable to leave
you alone. One more story about snakes and dogs. My
brother Tim had a black lab that I've talked about
on here before. His name was Zach and he was
quite a dog. I loved that rascal. Everyone loved him
and he loved everyone. But he hated snakes, and this
(28:59):
was no entry level hate either. This dude was a
Tier one snake hater. He hated them so much, especially rattlesnakes,
that he would dig them up either the den, kill them,
and bring them to my brother's porch and offer them
up as a testimony of his hatred for old Jake
no shoulders. He wasn't alone in this endeavor either. He
(29:20):
had an accomplice, a half Boston Terrier and half Blue
Healer named Fred. Don't even ask how that cross came about.
Zach was laid back in about the coolest dog you
have ever seen. His expressions reminded me of Eore on
Winnie the Pooh. That dude was the epitome of chill.
(29:40):
Fred was not. Fred was a hot wire And I'm
not sure if Fred was nervous or if he was
just really quick. But my brother is a gunsmith, and
on top of repairing guns and test firing them, we
would shoot skeet and everything else around there. We was
always shooting at something whenever Zach and Fred were around.
Every time time someone pulled the trigger and fired a shot,
(30:02):
for ever to body Zack right in the rear end.
Only Zack and nobody knew what. But back to the snakes.
Tim told me it was a common occurrence to hear
something on the porch and open the door to see
Zach and Fred standing there, Zack holding a dead rattlesnake
in his mouth, and he and Fred both looking like
they just survived five rounds with Mike Tyson. Tim said,
(30:25):
at first, as Zack said, it would look like a basketball,
but eventually, after years of Zach's campaign against snakes, that
the swelling wouldn't amount to much at all. It's pretty
crazy when you think about it. Now. Did he build
up a tolerance to the venom? He sure didn't build
up a tolerance to their presence. Zach lived a long time,
but I don't remember what happened to Fred. He probably
(30:47):
wound up in the nervous hospital. He was definitely a
good prospect for it. Anyway, Snakes are your challenged this week.
Do some paperwork and learn about the snakes in your
area and have a plan on what to do if
you or your dog gets bitten. I see people on
social media saying that the only good snake is a
(31:07):
dead snake. Well that ain't true. They serve a purpose
and they have a place. It's usually the best when
that place is over yonder, but they do have a place.
Be alert when you head to the mailbox. You never
know I might be lurking there. This is Brent Reeves
(31:29):
signing off. Y'all be careful.
Host
Clay Newcomb
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