Mississippi Canebrake Rattlers

While living in Mississippi in the late 1960s I resided in a mobilehome park owned by Flint Hobgood in the small village of Marion, about ten miles from where I worked.  Marion is but three or four miles northeast of Meridian.  I regularly traveled Lizelia Road, a narrow rural lane, on my commute from home to work.

During a late fall day my brother Dell and I were driving along Lizelia Road leisurely traveling from his home to mine.  As we had no particular task in mind we were chatting as we drove along.  Ahead there was a pickup truck parked along side of the road.  We paid particular attention as it had a dog box built onto the pickup box, and we were hunters.  As we slowly began to drive by the parked vehicle Dell said, “Look at them things.”

I said, “What things?”

He said, “Them snakes!”

I couldn’t see any snakes in the road and said so.  Dell said, “Not in the road, on that truck.”  I then was getting past it, so I braked to a stop to see what he was so excited about.  We got out and started a conversation with two men near the old beat up pickup.

They, like us, were merely driving along minding their own business when they spotted a snake crawling across the road.  As it was a big rattlesnake they decided to destroy it before it destroyed some man or beast.  One of the men had a .22 caliber rifle so he shot the rattler in the head.  As they were looking it all over and discussing it’s size, another equal to it began crawling across the road also.  The men shot that one too.

The men’s truck had a box constructed of full 4’ X 8’ sheets of plywood.  The box thus was 8’ long, and 4’ both in height and width.  They had hoisted the two snakes up and laid them crossways across the top of the pickup box.  The tail and head ends each draped about a foot down each side, making each rattlesnake about 6’ in length.

It was not my first ever encounter with rattlers, but they were the largest I ever saw.  I was never too sure about it, but both men insisted they were going to take the snakes home and eat them.  “Hey, don’t let me stop you, but I’ll pass.”