Touring Snakesville

It was the Spring flood season in the Mississippi Delta. For me and my friend that meant exploring. We launched the johnboat provisioned for the day with a couple of candy bars, a Coke apiece, and my friend’s recurve bow. We hadn’t quite graduated up to firearms, so the bow was for defense against bears, communists, Yetis, etc. Then as now I never venture into the wilderness unarmed.

I manned the front of the boat, while my buddy took the stern. That meant I was the engine and he the rudder. The guy up front is pretty much just propulsion. The rearmost crewmember does the practical navigation.

The river was high and the water swift. We kept the boat between the copious willows lining the banks, but only just. Then we gathered up some undue velocity and were confronted by a most unfortunate hairpin. The bow of the little aluminum boat, the end containing yours truly, slammed indelicately into the brush. The force of the water pressing in behind secured the boat in place.

I instinctively leaned backwards until I was on my back and pressed down by the weight of the surrounding copious brush. As spiders aplenty and similar creepy crawlies call such stuff home I explained in perhaps less than civil tones how much I coveted extrication.
That’s when I saw him.

I have known a great many folks who don’t so much mind poisonous snakes. They will prattle on for days regarding their many manifest virtues ranging from eating rodents to ably making more baby snakes. I simply must disagree.

I have had more than a few bad experiences with these creatures and have seen the aftereffects of a proper pit viper bite. I take my cues from Adam and Eve and harbor an almost insensate hatred of the things. Something else can eat the rodents. I think water moccasins are the reason God made shotguns. At this delicate juncture, however, my friend and I seemed to be temporarily between shotguns.

He was draped across a handful of brushy limbs staring me in the eye from a slant range of perhaps eight inches, his eyes and mine locked in a rictus most desperate. I have no clear recollection how big he was. Through the subjective lens of history I’d conservatively estimate about 12 feet. Realistically, I don’t care. He was huge, and I was well within his effective range. Were he to strike it would be into my eyeball. I had little interest in that.

Then … Nothing Happened

I explained to my pal in dulcet tones it seemed I was now sharing a certain intimate space with an enormous venomous serpent. I then further explained how grateful I might be should he stop whatever it was he was doing and remove the boat from this slithery gent’s domicile. Throughout it all I kept my eyes locked with those of the snake, his sinister vertical pupils most obvious at such close range. For what seemed an eternity — literally nothing happened.

I caught movement out of the periphery of my vision and glanced up. To my horror there was a rusty broadhead perched some 3″ from the side of my face. I contorted backward to see my friend balanced precariously above me, his old recurve bow now fully drawn. Before I could voice my simply breathtaking displeasure with this turn of events he released the arrow and the world exploded.

There was thrashing and splashing aplenty as I snatched up my paddle and clawed the boat out of the giant brush pile. As I restarted my heart I shared some choice words with my buddy. He said he wanted to retrieve his arrow. I told him to be my guest. I wasn’t myself voluntarily re-entering Snakesville to do so. I reversed the boat in the current and shoved the stern in this time. About 6″ of the arrow twitched above the roiling water, the fletching moving rhythmically with the current.

My pal gently snatched up the tail of the shaft and retrieved it. Impaled upon the end was a water moccasin about the size of my arm. It seemed the arrow had hit the snake in his open mouth, pinned him to the creek bed through his lower jaw, and quite effectively stopped the threat. We dragged the big snake up onto the bank and beat him to death with a log.

The geometry of the thing told a fascinating tale. The bolt had skewered the big snake through his open mouth as he prepared to bite me in the face. Had my pal’s aim not been true I might have yet ended up even less attractive to look upon than I am now. God clearly watches out for young boys.

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