Читать книгу 8 Bags of Mice - Z.C. Christie - Страница 15

LITTLE SNAKES ARE ICKY, TOO

In the summer of 2005, before we were hit by Hurricane Rita, we had an above ground pool installed off the back of the house. This pool was a large one, and it required the ground to be leveled, which left lots of big dirt piles sitting around the yard once more.

One pile was located next to the section of a new deck being built around the pool, which was going to connect to the existing older deck. In the course of landscaping and getting rid of these piles of dirt, workers uncovered dozens of little snakes, which they called “pygmy rattlers”. These came spilling out in all directions after they apparently hit some sort of nest. At first I thought it was a nest of baby garter snakes, since I had never heard of pygmy rattlers.

I was interested and went back inside to do an internet search on this species, thinking to myself, well, at least they weren’t baby water moccasins…

No, they weren’t, but my search turned up something just as eye opening. Ground rattlers, or pygmy rattlesnakes, yes, they do exist and are found in Louisiana and obviously right in my back yard. I ran back outside to stand a cautious distance away from the edge of the deck, then called out to the workmen…were they what they had seen were pygmy rattlesnakes?

“Real shore, ma’am. See, we was watchin’ one befo’ lunch, tryin’ ta wiggle down inta one of those crawfish mounds you gots all over yore yard? (I’ll explain later) Got a good look at it, pygmy rattler, alright. Prolly been nestin’ in that mounda dirt foh awahl, tho you doan usually see em dis close to a house.”

“Did you see where all those snakes went to when you disturbed the nest?” I ask anxiously, scanning the ground, the deck, the spaces between the deck slats, my toes curling up off the boards as I do.

“Why, yes ma’am, we shore did. They all went straight unner yore deck, ever’ last one. Funny thing, huh?”

Hysterical, oh yeah…. I’ll start laughing once I go swallow a few tranquilizers…