Rattlesnake

My brother Dell and I were out hunting rabbits on a dreary sort of a Sunday morning in December during the late 60s on the Naval Air Station north of Meridian, Mississippi.  Both of us were in the Navy, but that had little to do with what we were doing.  We belonged to the Base Sportsmen’s Club and therefore hunted the Base woods and meadows for rabbits nearly every weekend during the fall season.

On this particular day we had a pack of six beagles out working for all they were worth, but nothing seemed to be moving, probably due to the moderate rain that was falling all morning.  We tried several separate areas, each time gathering the dogs up and placing them in the back of my 1948 Jeep CJ1, and moving on to some other well-known (to us) area.  After three or four hours of this even we gave up.

We decided it was time to gather in the dogs, pack them into the Jeep, and head for our respective homes.  I blew on my silent whistle and my Sue dog readily came.  After we placed her in the dry Jeep Dell began gathering up his dogs.  He had never trained them to the whistle, and some readily came to his voice call, while others were not so ready to go back to their humdrum life in a wire fenced run.  Becky and Joe both came and we put them in the back with Sue.  After some more calling another showed up and we captured it too.  The last two were not so ready to cede to a rabbitless day.  Dell decided to walk into the nearby woods after several minutes to bring them out to the Jeep.

Dell always carried two or three chain type leashes in a coat pocket.  Being chain they would fold into a pocket readily, and he hardly knew he was carrying them.   After a few minutes in the woods he appeared at the edge headed back toward the Jeep.  I watched him approach until he was no more than fifty yards away from me.  He had a beagle on a leash in each hand and walked steadily toward me in the ever steady-falling rain.  When he got to that distance, suddenly a rattler sprung up out of the grass directly in front of him.  It seemed to strike at him, but somehow missed its target and went harmlessly past his left leg.  Possibly that was all it intended to do.  As it passed through between Dell and the beagle on that side the Beagle tried to take a bite out of it, but it too missed its intended target.

I looked on in horror with absolutely nothing I could do at that distance.  Had I even been expecting it to happen I could not have shot it, but I didn’t even have a gun loaded, much less was I thinking of shooting the snake.  Dell stopped dead in his tracks, frozen in an uncontrollable fear.  I called to him, but no answer, nor movement, was forthcoming.  I slowly walked toward him watching for any sign of the snake, or any other, carefully placing each footstep as I got closer.  When I got right up to him I spoke his name.  There was still no answer.  I then slapped him, and in an instant he was normal again, with no recollection of the past few moments.  He didn’t know how I had got from the Jeep to where he was without his seeing me arrive.  He didn’t recall seeing the snake either.  He had no idea I had struck him.

We put the last pair of dogs in the Jeep and headed for home.  Soon we had dipped the dogs in tick medicine, and put them back in their pen where they immediately went into their shelter and shook spreading the medicine within the structure.  Only then did we enter the warmth of his home, and after removing our thoroughly wet outer clothes, and wiping down our shotguns, we each enjoyed a good hot cup of coffee.