Everyone has a snake story.
Some, like me, have several serpent tales.
My first direct encounter occurred in the woods of Pike County around 1975.
I had just learned to ride my off-road Mongoose bicycle when I rolled over a giant black snake with yellow specks, causing me to leap off the bike seat and run as fast as lightning to the arms of my dad.
He told me I saw a non-poisonous king snake, a reptile that eats other snakes and small mammals.
His words offered little comfort, as I had wet my pants in sheer terror. I dreamt of that encounter for weeks and vividly remember to this day my overwhelming fear.
Three years later, I floated the Bogue Chitto River on an old tractor tube. Coming round a river bend with my friends, I nudged a swimming snake and shrieked liked I had been stabbed by a thousand tiny pieces of glass.
The water moccasin, aka cottonmouth, freaked out more than me and swiftly glided away as though propelled on turbo skis. Again, after that experience, I am to this day “eyeball glued” to a river’s currents when kayaking. (Tubing bit the dust.)
A few years ago, I drove to my Greene County tree farm and poked my head in my old cabin. To my surprise, I stood staring at the shedding skin of a gray rat snake. That sucker was six feet long, and I suspect he spent the winter lounging in my shelter feasting on rats.
I’m told that if you find a snake in your attic, it’s likely a rat snake, commonly called a chicken snake.
Not far from my cabin lurked a creature far more sinister.
While driving my tractor, the bush hog executed an Eastern Diamondback rattlesnake. To make matters worse, she was pregnant, and the mower blades released dozens of baby rattlers, scurrying in different directions while I did John Deere donuts in a bizarre circular rhythm dance of death.
In my own yard, I occasionally see skinny black racer snakes scooting across the yard at breakneck speed.
They give new meaning to the phrase “snake in the grass.” Those critters are so fast, I would hate to be an insect or small rodent trying to avoid being the “lunch special” of the day.
Which leads me to a text and photo my brother sent me last week. Doing his “weekend warrior” duties in his backyard in Madison County, he almost stepped on a mature copperhead, a venomous brown snake with a scary triangular head.
The menacing thing was perfectly camouflaged among the recently fallen brown oak leaves scattered on the grass.
My brother is a water biologist and conservationist, but “Mr. Blunt Tail” was a threat to kids and pets and had to be eliminated.
Trust me. You do not want a copperhead in your yard.
In the movie, Raiders of The Lost Ark Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) had a heightened fear of snakes.
In one scene, he drops a torch into a tomb where he must descend and the light exposes thousands of snakes.
Seeing this, he gasps and says, “Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?”
Many of us can relate to that scene, but in reality, snakes are shy creatures that want to be left alone to eat other pests.
So if you see a slithering serpent – viper or not – keep your distance and stay calm.
You are about to have a story to tell family and friends.
Clark Hicks is a lawyer who lives in Hattiesburg. Email him a note at: clark@hicksattorneys.com
