I was thinking yesterday about a snake we had at the barn one day. He was a nine foot long anaconda and bigger around than my body. I know you generally don’t find Anacondas in
I had walked under the catwalk (snake walk?) that leads to our barn loft, and just happened to glance up and see him. Of course, it freaked me out! So I ran back to the tack room and grabbed a shovel. Being the big brave man that I was, when it comes to snakes, I thought he needed to die! When I got back, he was gone….well, I started up the stairs….slowly easin’ along…..till I was eye level with the bottom of the door. No snake. Crud! Where the heck did he go?
I don’t know what made me look up, but I saw about the last two feet of him going over the top of the door into the loft! So I stabbed at him with my shovel! I only caught about the last ten inches or so and it was his tail in the crack of the door! So I couldn’t kill him, all I could do was hold him! He was banging around on the inside of the door and every once in a while he would stick his head back out. Staring at me with those black beady eyes, sticking his tongue out. He was probably thinking, “Ok big boy, you got me. What do you plan to do with me now?” I just know he was wondering how he could eat me and still eat one of the horses!
If you know anything about me, you know I hate snakes! Okay, hate is a pretty strong word….I generally won’t run from them, but if I can’t kill ‘em…..I ain’t staying to make friends! Wait a minute…I do hate snakes!
Anyway, I’m standing on this 4 inch wide catwalk, holding the nine foot snake by the tail with a shovel and, oh yeah, I only holding about 10 inches of him! So I start to think of ways I could get the door open without turning the snake loose…..FLASH, I would get Felicia to open the door while I held the snake by the tail (with my shovel). I then could kill him! She was mowing around the barn so hearing was limited. So I started hollering (ok, maybe screaming like a girl….just a little) to get her attention. She keeps looking around, I think it must have taken her eight hours to finally hear me (ok maybe it was 2-3 minutes).
But she finally does and she walks around to the catwalk and starts laughing at me! Doesn’t she know that I am protecting family and her by fighting this giant? Yeah, I know I’m sweating a little…I have been snake fighting. Yes, I know those are really BIG beads of sweat. And no, that was not me screaming like a little girl! You can keep you comments to yourself! All I wanted her to do was come up here and open the door; I did not need all of this abuse!
She said, “Are you crazy? You would knock me off the top of the barn to get away from that snake!”
Well heck, now what am I going to do? What she had said was probably not a lie, but she would never know for sure. At this point I was having a little trouble thinking. I had been fighting him for 8 or 9 hours…some fatigue had set in. 0r it could have just been hard to think over Felicia’s laughter, I prefer to think it was the latter! I finally decided I could ease the door open, while turning my shovel head long ways….thus keeping him pinned and eventually dead!
As I turned my shovel….in a flash… it was gone! All of the sudden I am done with the barn! I casually walked back down the 10 or 12 steps (well maybe I jumped from the 12 foot catwalk, my point is…I wasn’t there very long!). I was still sweating like crazy and really breathing hard (I had been giant snake fighting)
The first thing Felicia asked me was, “are you going to get him out?”
Are you nuts? I gently told her, “No, I am not going in there”
She said, “What are you going to do about him?”
I said, “Burn the barn.”
She thought I was kidding……
Ok, to be truthful…it was a 4 foot chicken snake about as big around as my wrist. I know it was a 4 foot snake because when I saw him he was stretched across the bottom of the door (it’s a 4 foot door). And no, the catwalk was not 4 inches wide. It just felt that way because of the proximity of the snake; it’s about 4 foot wide. The whole snake fight probably only lasted five or six minutes. The cat walk is twelve feet in the air. The rest is true, almost verbatim.
Four foot is still a doggone big snake….did I mention I hate snakes?
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