Six Dollar Dave
Member
As a young child, I lived with my grandparents on a small farm in Southeastern Arkansas. Money wasn't plentiful in those days, so everything that could be home grown was. Our cows furnished the milk, nearby woods provided wild game, an occasional slaughtered hog gave us bacon, ham. and sausage. The hens in the chicken coop produced fresh eggs and our small stock pond gave up the occasional bass or bluegill. When you combine a pond, a barn with livestock, and grain, you naturally get rats and mice. Where you have rats and mice, you have snakes. The most common around our neck of the woods were cottonmouths and copperheads. To counter the poisonous snake population, my grandfather procured a king snake from a nearby field. Anytime my grandfather would find his king snake crawling back to it's former home, he would catch it and bring it back to the barn/hen house area. The snake finally caught on and got behind the spirit of the deal and for two years or so this arrangement seemed to work to the satisfaction of all parties involved. That is until early one Saturday morning in the summer of 1959.
The story you are about to read has never before been told. I was sworn to secrecy at the time of the event, and I must ask all those who read this tale to "keep mum" about the whole affair.
That Saturday morning began as usual. My grandmother made her daily pilgrimage to the hen house to collect eggs for breakfast. As she rounded the far corner of the chicken coop, she spied my grandfather's king snake having an early morning egg. I'm sure the king snake saw nothing wrong in adding a little variety to his normal diet of water moccasins and copperheads, but my grandmother, not one to take the loss of even one egg lightly, took an entirely different view of the matter. She grabbed a nearby hoe, as a hoe was her weapon of choice. She'd pick a hoe over a shotgun, rifle, or handgun any day! I've seen her dispatch thousands of moccasins, separate the bulls from the cows, stop armadillos in their tracks and once I even saw her throw it at a squirrel.(Her windage was off and she missed the squirrel by a foot.)
Anyway, she began to try to push the egg back out of the snake with the handle of the hoe. The snake thought he had as much right to the egg as my grandmother, and as such, declined to give up his egg. In fact, he seemed quite perturbed by what I'm sure he saw as a breach of contract and stubbornly tried to hang on to his egg. The tussle lasted for only a short time, but in that time the serpent proved to be a worthy opponent. Grandmother parried and thrusted as good as Errol Flynn ever handled a sword, but try as she might, she just couldn't get that egg back out of the snake. (I can only hope that had my grandmother's efforts proved successful, my precious baby sister would have been the recipient this particular egg). In a sudden fit of frustration, my grandmother applied a trifle too much force with the hoe handle and my grandfather's king snake expired rather unexpectedly. This left my grandmother in command of the field of battle, her prize being a broken egg and a dead king snake. The "battle of the bulge" was over as quickly as it began.
Not wanting to have to explain her actions to my grandfather, who could be rather less than understanding in these situations, she conscripted me into her army as her aid-de-camp. My first assignment was to hide the body. I dutifully carried the carcass "away off" behind the barn and dug a shallow grave for the one time king of serpents.
My grandfather looked all that summer for his king snake. He was a fair hunter and woodsman, but not one sign of his king snake could he find. One morning at breakfast, he eyed me warily and asked, "Davy, you haven't seen my old king snake lately, have you?" I found it impossible to look him in the eye and equally impossible to look down at the egg on my plate. I was saved by grandmother quickly changing the subject, and the conversation mercifully drifted into safer waters.
My grandmother and I never spoke of that morning. It was our secret. We both knew that no good could come of the sharing of this story and we were unfamiliar with the Freedom of Information laws anyway.
The story you are about to read has never before been told. I was sworn to secrecy at the time of the event, and I must ask all those who read this tale to "keep mum" about the whole affair.
That Saturday morning began as usual. My grandmother made her daily pilgrimage to the hen house to collect eggs for breakfast. As she rounded the far corner of the chicken coop, she spied my grandfather's king snake having an early morning egg. I'm sure the king snake saw nothing wrong in adding a little variety to his normal diet of water moccasins and copperheads, but my grandmother, not one to take the loss of even one egg lightly, took an entirely different view of the matter. She grabbed a nearby hoe, as a hoe was her weapon of choice. She'd pick a hoe over a shotgun, rifle, or handgun any day! I've seen her dispatch thousands of moccasins, separate the bulls from the cows, stop armadillos in their tracks and once I even saw her throw it at a squirrel.(Her windage was off and she missed the squirrel by a foot.)
Anyway, she began to try to push the egg back out of the snake with the handle of the hoe. The snake thought he had as much right to the egg as my grandmother, and as such, declined to give up his egg. In fact, he seemed quite perturbed by what I'm sure he saw as a breach of contract and stubbornly tried to hang on to his egg. The tussle lasted for only a short time, but in that time the serpent proved to be a worthy opponent. Grandmother parried and thrusted as good as Errol Flynn ever handled a sword, but try as she might, she just couldn't get that egg back out of the snake. (I can only hope that had my grandmother's efforts proved successful, my precious baby sister would have been the recipient this particular egg). In a sudden fit of frustration, my grandmother applied a trifle too much force with the hoe handle and my grandfather's king snake expired rather unexpectedly. This left my grandmother in command of the field of battle, her prize being a broken egg and a dead king snake. The "battle of the bulge" was over as quickly as it began.
Not wanting to have to explain her actions to my grandfather, who could be rather less than understanding in these situations, she conscripted me into her army as her aid-de-camp. My first assignment was to hide the body. I dutifully carried the carcass "away off" behind the barn and dug a shallow grave for the one time king of serpents.
My grandfather looked all that summer for his king snake. He was a fair hunter and woodsman, but not one sign of his king snake could he find. One morning at breakfast, he eyed me warily and asked, "Davy, you haven't seen my old king snake lately, have you?" I found it impossible to look him in the eye and equally impossible to look down at the egg on my plate. I was saved by grandmother quickly changing the subject, and the conversation mercifully drifted into safer waters.
My grandmother and I never spoke of that morning. It was our secret. We both knew that no good could come of the sharing of this story and we were unfamiliar with the Freedom of Information laws anyway.
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