UPPER DECK: Of Sports And Snakes

Steven Carter -- DB.com

Fall has long been my favorite time of year. All the major sports are going at once: baseball playoffs, football, basketball, hockey, and hunting. Growing up in west Texas in the 70’s, things were a bit different. There were only two sports that mattered, football and hunting.

In my teenage years I did quite a lot of the latter, mostly at my grandfather's farm which had a couple of hundred acres of pasture land, just right for quail hunting. Almost every fall weekend, during hunting season, my grandfather's beagle, Daisy, and I were down in the pasture looking for quail while my parents spent the day visiting.

West Texas had a few things you could absolutely count on; quail were abundant, and so were rattlesnakes, and my grandfather's place was only about 15 miles from Sweetwater, where the biggest rattlesnake roundup in the world takes place once a year. My dad always told me, “Whenever you are out in the woods, always watch where you step.’’ It's kind of hard to do, watching for quail and watching your step at the same time, but I was mildly concerned about … no, more like completely terrified of … snakes. I could blame it on my youth, but the fact is, I still am terrified. In taking my kids through the reptile house at the zoo, I still have some lingering doubts; maybe snakes can dematerialize like the crew of Star Trek!? I am not willing to completely rule out that snakes may have hidden technologies that we don't know about.

Anyway, Daisy was always good about warning me about snakes and stuff, because she was even more of a coward than I was. I started out into the pasture, I heard my mom yell after me, “Watch for snakes!’’ I shook my head in the way all teenage boys do to show that they are cool while inside thinking, "Damned straight I'll watch for snakes."

We had ventured a couple of hundred yards down into the pasture. Daisy was doing her usual sniff tour of every mesquite tree, every rock, every blade of grass. Beagles are like that; any time you have them outside they have their nose pressed solid against the ground, doing what beagles do, trying to find the squirrel.

Suddenly, I noticed something different about Daisy, she stopped, and she was not looking down, instead she was looking up above my head and baying as loud as she could. I looked up, and there I saw it. A mesquite branch about six feet above my head and wrapped around the branch, my worst nightmare: A snake! I am not kidding when I say it was the biggest snake I have ever seen, and it was directly above me. Of course, I learned a lot from Western movies, and I knew in this circumstance, John Wayne would never panic, neither would Steve McQueen. Unfortunately, neither one of them were with me. So, left on my own, I did the only thing I could think of to do. That's right, I panicked.

I pumped a round into my 12-gauge shotgun, and shot at the snake, straight up, directly over my head. Understand, I was a teenage boy, and of course, all teenage boys share one common characteristic. They are dumb as rocks.

I was always a pretty good shot. I could pick off bottles at fifty yards with .22 rifle. I commonly hit birds on the fly with my shotgun. But the birds were never wrapped around a tree branch directly over my head, and with few exceptions, birds are not snakes. Despite the fact I was only six feet away. Somehow I missed the snake completely but I neatly severed the branch it was wrapped around which neatly fell directly on top of me.

As I laid on the ground, thinking my life was over, and watching it flash before my eyes, I wondered if Tyra Elkins, the cute girl down the street that I had a secret crush on, would attend my funeral, the only things I could do, big coward that I am, was to lay perfectly still and close my eyes so I would not have to watch the snake eat me. I guess I knew he would not really eat me, but you can never be too sure. So I laid there. After a few moments I felt something move up and across my chest. I did not even breathe. I was absolutely sure I was a goner. Then suddenly, I felt something cold and wet on my neck. Carefully, I opened my eyes, just as Daisy laid a big wet lick right in my face. I guess cold-nosing me was not enough. I looked around and did not see a sign of a snake, but I got up slowly, then just to make sure the snake was not hiding on me, I jumped up, doing crazy shaking and nonsensical gyrations like Michael Irvin dancing the Rumba.

It was a long walk back to the house. There were no birds to show for the outing, and somehow I had to figure out an explanation for why I came back so quick, and for why I needed to change my pants.