By Ricky Swindle

Howdy friends!

Peggy Walker was definitely correct in her final column about the need for receiving community feedback for articles written. It makes all the difference in the world just hearing from folks who read your lines and reach out to comment on stories written whether they sometimes agree or not with the writers opinion.

Writing every now and then for The Panolian is a later in life hobby that I enjoy and I appreciate all the good folks who approach me and share their opinions on the subjects I have chosen to publish. It’s nothing I could ever quit my day job over, but any time you have a hobby you enjoy that only costs you time, then you are coming out fairly decent I believe.

I heard a lot this past week concerning my last story about the snake on a fence. A lot of good laughs have been shared about that article with the main culprit even stopping by to update me on more scientific information to back up his theory.

According to my farmer friend, a fellow in Texas explained to him why his “snake on a fence when you are needing rain”procedure actually has validity.

The Texas sod buster’s reasoning is that when it gets real hot and dry, snakes will burrow in the ground to cool off and are more apt to only come out at night when the temperature is cooler. That being the reason you cannot find one to shoot in the daytime to hang on your fence.

 Come to think about it, even Charlie Pride’s first hit song was “The Snakes Crawl At Night” but ol’ Charlie was referring to snaky sneaky people.

Snakes, like all animals, have a sense that alerts them when the weather is changing. When a snake senses rain, it will come out of its burrow hole to take advantage of it. Evidently, when you finally see a snake during daylight hours in the hot summer, that signals the end of the drought.  

Now I haven’t checked with any snake-a-mologist or whatever they’re called because I don’t know one personally but I’d think some ol’ farmer boys, who although may be lacking in an actual reptilian college education, may actually know a thing or two themselves about a snake without having attained more degrees than a thermometer on the subject.

Having said all that and after my week long conversations concerning snakes, I have my own snake story for ya’ll that don’t involve a theory, unless it would be called the snake fear theory.

A few months back, my wife hollers “Snake”! I run around the house to see and sure enough there was a big snake coiled up at the access to the underneath of our house.

I run and grab my 45/410 Judge pistol that is loaded with actual snake shot ammo that I used going fishing in the Spring. The snake slithers under the house and as I was hunkered down looking for it, the Boss Lady says “Do not shoot that pistol under the house. We just have snake trouble, we don’t need more trouble”.

What she was referring to was a few years back when one of those slimy devils crawled inside the tin on the backside of my Dewdrop Inn. I killed it with a 22 pistol and in doing so, I also shot my water line that was inside the wall too flooding my man cave. Oh well says I. I got him anyway.

This past Sunday I was laying around TV binging and I went to throw a Skoal can in the garbage. Our garbage can pulls out from under the side of the sink like a big drawer. I looked down and between the can and the cabinet is a big black snake coiled up looking straight at me !

I hollered out a synonym for the word manure and ran to the back to tell my gal. She comes to see and the next thing she knows is I’m standing there with my Judge in hand. She informs me to holster my pistol that we are going to find an alternative form of snake removal.

Her and her baby sister were using these long tong like things to try and grab the snake. I’m standing to the edge looking over the top of them ‘cause this ol’ boy is fearful of 2 things in this world : snakes and electricity. Both of ‘em will kill you.

I called my son-in-law Clay from down the road and he shows up with a piece of cane and commences gouging at the mad thing and it’s striking like a cobra. And then it turns and it’s gone. Just vanished.

They, not me, removed everything from underneath that long bar cabinet, even as far as pulling out the dishwasher but no snake to be found.

In the cabinet under the sink they found a hole that we believe it could’ve entered and exited thru so they packed it with steel wool.

It is a very uneasy feeling knowing there was a snake in that cabinet that is no longer there. My wife and her sister are going to wear the hinges out on those cabinets opening and closing them snake checking, but I won’t be joining them on that hunt.

She even told me later Sunday night “I guess I should’ve let you shoot that thing. May have cost 10 grand to replace the bar but at least we’d have the satisfaction of knowing that it was dead”. She should not have told me that because if it happens again, there will be no questions asked, it’s going to sound like duck season in Crowder up in that nest I guarantee that.

Folks, sometimes you just can’t make stuff up. Crazy things happen in the blink of an eye even on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Take care of yourself folks and if you see a snake, shoot the dadgum thing right then and there and discuss it later.