When you lived in the country a long time ago especially on a farm, you had to share your space with all kinds of critters. Rats and mice were always there to keep you company and share in the bounty of the garden, corn cribs and barns. Birds were everywhere and were an even bigger pest. On the farm there was a bird bent on eating or messing up anything you could name. Country people invented bird watching for the purpose of shooting some of them just to preserve the produce. There were squirrels and rabbits, but not many because people ate them, and possums, coons, armadillos, fox, bobcats, hawks, hogs, mink, skunks and giraffes. There were no deer because when the battery-powered headlight came into common use, that problem was eliminated.
Of course I haven’t mentioned frogs, lizards and snakes. Snakes ate all of the above except the giraffes. They also ate the baby chickens and the eggs. They were all extremely poisonous -- or at least that’s what we were told. Grandma told many a tale about stinging snakes and hoop snakes. She even told about milk snakes that sucked milk from cows. She really believed that though I never could pin her down about whether she had ever seen any of them. It was always, paw told us about a snake that stung his milk cow and she dropped dead right before his eyes, or maw saw a snake stick his tail in his mouth, make a hoop and roll down the hill in front of the ‘ole place.’ If the cow doesn’t have milk in the evening, it’s usually because a milk snake got it. And those ‘spread natters’ will charm birds out of the air and eat them when they fall down in front of them. “I’ve seen that!” she would say. When I started to school our teacher told us there were only four poisonous snakes in Louisiana...the rattlesnake, the copperhead or rattle snake pilot, the cottonmouth, and the ground rattler or pigmy rattler. This created a furor in many homes because many people believed there were a lot more poisonous snakes than that.
I was overjoyed to learn that most snakes were non-poisonous. This started a long terrible episode in my usually well-behaved life according to most of my family and acquaintances. Of course I got over that snake stuff but not without some pretty dire consequences, almost.
My brother and I started out catching garter snakes. They were mean little rascals and would bite the snot out of you. We very soon learned to catch them behind the head. Then we graduated to chicken snakes and on to the big bad boys.
My mother wasn’t all that scared of snakes as long as she had plenty of warning. But I made a bad mistake one day when we were out hoeing in the garden. Naturally I was distracted by everything but the hoeing. Mamma said, “What in the world are you doing down there now?” I had a big garter snake and raised up to show it to her. She was real close to me trying to see what I was up to. When the snake started wiggling in her face, she screamed and started running backwards through the squash plants. Then she fainted. I had never seen anyone faint before. I thought she was dead and I started crying.
My daddy looked up from his hoeing and yelled, “What the hell’s going on over there?” I yelled, “Mamma’s dead. I showed her a snake and she dropped dead.”
He ran over and looked at her and said, “She ain’t dead but you sure as hell are. She just tore up at least ten hills of squash. He grabbed the snake and started whipping me with it and we tore down some more squash.
Then mamma got up and started yelling at him. “Clifton Pigott, all you were worried about was those darn squash. You don’t give a drat that I was passed out on the ground.” He let me loose and tried to soothe her. It didn’t work. He looked so funny trying to apologize to her with half a dead snake in his hand. He tried to hug her and she saw the bloody snake with guts hanging out and screamed again. I started laughing. That was another big mistake. Off came the belt and we tore down some more squash.
After that I was real careful around mamma with snakes. She didn’t mind us playing with them. Just don’t surprise her with one. We even had a collection of snakes pickled in rubbing alcohol. Those didn’t bother her so much.
One summer I was working in the pulp woods out at the mink plantation near Kisatchee. J.V. Martin and I loaded and hauled the wood to a large set of skids over by Rocky Creek. Back then those old pulp wood trucks were nothing but wrecks. They usually had no windshields, fenders, mufflers and not much brakes. I didn’t know J.V. was so scared of snakes or I wouldn’t have done it. But I put a little dead snake in his gloves.
We were going down a big hill just past Lonnie Well’s house when J.V. reached over for his gloves and slid his hand in the left one. He felt something and took his hand out. Then he shook the glove and the little ole bitty snake fell out in his lap.
Well we both almost met our maker then because J.V. started trying to yell. When you stutter, and are scared, and try to talk, it’s not that easy. I was laughing so hard I was doubled over. That changed real fast because J.V. was crawling out of the pulp wood truck going forty miles per hour downhill on a gravel road. By the time I sobered up, he was out on the running board. I was trying to steer the thing from the right side. It had about three-fourths of a turn of slack in the steering wheel and was hard to steer at the best. It was going faster and faster. J.V. was yelling, “You..you..you ole devil!” I was yelling, “Get back in J.V. It’s dead!” “N..n..no I ain’t,” he said.
Well I knew I had screwed up again. I had to stop that truck. Somehow I crawled over a tool box in the middle of the seat, got tangled up in the gearshift, dog gear and emergency brake that didn’t work and into the driver’s seat. By the time we got to the bottom of the hill, I had the truck slowed down.
J.V. was mad at me all day. I was still shaking a week later and made a solemn vow to myself to be more careful with snakes, especially in moving vehicles. But you can break a vow to yourself and eventually I did. When I put a garter snake in an ex-friend’s water bottle, I had to remake that vow. When all my snakes got out of their cage at W.W. Lewis Jr. High where I taught, I had to remake that vow. When one of my students got bitten by a six foot boa and slung it across the room scaring certain kids nearly to death, I made a very firm vow that I have almost kept. Life sure gets dull but I guess it’s safer that way. Pore ole Eve.
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