Anyone Need Some Boots? Perhaps a Handbag? How About Some Shoes?

My wife & I were in our front yard doing some landscaping earlier this month. We have two trees in our front yard and we wanted to create a set of decorative rings around them. At the same time, I figured we should put out a new mailbox and post seeing as how the old one was looking a bit worse for wear. When we were looking at houses, we knew we didn't want to buy a fixer-upper, but we sure have managed to stay busy with projects around this all-but-brand-new home of ours which was built in 2006. From installing a chain link fence to an overhaul of the shrubbery beds around our front porch, trust me when I say that we've found plenty of ways to stay busy. Troubling thing is, I can think of about half a dozen other things that need to be done but we just haven't gotten around to them yet.

We were working away when all of a sudden we hear someone shout, "NEIGHBOR! HEY, NEIGHBOR - YOU KNOW HOW TO KILL A SNAKE?!"

The shout came from one of our neighbors, who was approaching our yard with haste. Jill and I have been in our home for about a year now but I'd never had the occasion to meet this neighbor before as he lives several houses down from us on an adjacent street within view of our house. That said, I wanted to pretend I didn't hear him. I wanted to go back in the house and make believe that I didn't see him or hear the word "snake" come out of his mouth. Alas, I couldn't.

We would later learn from him that he'd gone around the neighborhood asking for help with no success. The people who live next door to us had apparently given some excuse about "women and cats" being inside the home and shut the door in his face.

My response was "Do you have a shotgun?", to which he responded in the negative. As luck would have it, I happened to be holding a blade shovel in my hands at the point this conversation began. It and the fact that I was in the yard were apparently all that were required to volunteer me for this job.

I followed our neighbor, whose name I still didn't know at this point, from our front yard over behind his house. He and his son had spotted the snake lying beside their air conditioning unit while they were outside working, just as we had been. As I approached the AC unit, keeping a good 30-40 foot distance between myself and it, I noticed a cat looked to be in a hunting crouch, prepared to go after prey. When I saw what the cat had cornered, I couldn't believe my eyes.

It was a rattlesnake. The pattern on its scales was unmistakable.

Suddenly this became more than just "a snake" - this was a deadly creature that posed a danger on everyone in our neighborhood, not to mention so many beloved pets. I tried to figure out what was our best course of action, since I was apparently now in command of the situation. We have animal shelter but nothing along the lines of animal control, so I wasn't sure if this was something they'd be capable of handling. I didn't put too much into calling the local police department either; what were they going to do, lock up the snake for trespassing? It seemed like my only course of action was to dispatch this beautiful but deadly creature with extreme prejudice.

I wasn't getting close enough to it to kill it with my shovel, that's for sure. Snakes like this can effectively strike a target several feet away, meaning I needed a weapon capable of killing the snake but not damaging my neighbor's home while keeping me at a safe distance. Shooting the snake seemed to be the only solution.

My questioning our neighbor about owning a shotgun (I don't have one but after this little incident that may change sooner than later) was before I knew of where the snake was holed up. The snake's proximity to the house as well as the air conditioner made using such a weapon out of the question as doing so would have wound up peppering both with pellets. The brick exterior of the home probably could've taken the shot well enough but the AC would've been shredded.

My wife ran back to our home to get one of our pistols, of which we own several. I was hoping she would return with my Springfield XD .40, but she came back with one of our Ruger SR22s. (Remember how Roy Scheider wanted a bigger boat after first seeing the shark in JAWS? For that same reason, I wanted a bigger gun.) We bought a pair of them a while back, intending for them to be concealed carry options for us seeing as how we both have our concealed weapons permits. They're the kind of weapon one buys for personal defense. It goes without saying that we didn't buy these with killing snakes in mind!

We'd had these particular handguns for a while but we'd not yet had a chance to fire them so I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of how it was going to handle. The fact that it was a .22 meant it should be controllable but I wasn't certain how good it would be against the hide of that snake, my never having had the occasion to shoot a rattlesnake before and all. At the same time, we live within the town limits, meaning I was now committed to firing a gun within said boundary - which is illegal.

Just to recap where we are at this point in the story:

- I'm wearing workout shorts, a cut-off t-shirt and a floppy hat.
- I have to kill a poisonous snake.
- I'm about to fire a gun in a residential neighborhood in front of an audience of half a dozen or so people.

I loaded 6 rounds into the magazine. I was still unsure if the .22 would do much more to the snake than piss it off, which is why I didn't bother filling the mag to capacity. This is where if this moment in my life had been a cheap science fiction film I'd have wound up making a horrible mistake - having only 6 bullets when in actuality I'd need 7. Remember, for all I knew this thing could've been some kind of escaped military experiment super-snake with Kevlar scales and steel fangs.

While trying not to focus on that scenario, I made certain everyone was out of harms way, readied the weapon, and proceeded to fire 4 shots, taking the time to check my aim between each (I wasn't concerned about ricochet but trust me when I say that the potentiality of my being sued for damages as a result of putting bullet holes in this man's property was in my mind all along).

Suddenly my audience of 5 or 6 became an honest baker's dozen. Who knew the sounds of random gunfire would attract a crowd?

My first shot wound up being slightly low although the other three were on target. You won't hear me bragging about being a marksman; the fact that the snake was coiled certainly made it easier to hit.

Is it odd that I felt bad for killing the snake? I have always been one to feel empathy, almost to a disabling degree, even in a situation like this where what I did more than likely was for the best. I blame it on good parenting.

After about 20 minutes, the snake stopped moving around. One of our other neighbors, who showed up to the event quite late, took my shovel and attempted to chop off the snake's head using the blade. He didn't do much more than push the snake's body down into the muddy soil surrounding the air conditioner; all the rain we've had lately made it too soft to serve as an effective block, otherwise he might have actually been able to decapitate it.

Satisfied that it was dead, we put the snake's carcass into a large plastic bucket. Upon holding it up, the snake looked to be almost 4 feet in length. We noticed that its abdomen appeared rather distended, meaning it had apparently eaten something recently, perhaps a rodent or some other critter unlucky enough to have been the snake's last meal.

My neighbor's son decided he wanted to touch the snake, just to see what it felt like. He was still skittish about putting his arm in the bucket with a rattlesnake, be it alive or dead, so I put the pan of my shovel in between the head and body of the snake. He reached down and ever so lightly brushed his fingertips against the snake, and he squealed like a little girl. If someone had been shooting video of us, we could've won some real money with that reaction. That or at least been YouTube-famous for a couple days.

I'm not sure what became of the snake's remains. One of our other neighbors had mentioned an old wives tale about how burning a snake after killing it will send a message to others that might be nearby to avoid the area. I want to question the science of that but who knows - the only difference between a myth and fact is documentation, after all.