A snake in the grass: lessons applied

Through personal experience, I can tell you this: It's not so much the realization that the ground is moving under your foot as it is the keen moment of understanding that the buzzing noise is a rattlesnake telling you to get your fat foot off him that really kicks in the adrenaline overdose.

The good news is that the adrenaline allows you to jump a full 6 feet, twisting in the air to land facing the immediate threat of death by venom.

The adrenaline rush works the same way for a dog too.

This being my first snake encounter, and my dog's too, we were woefully unprepared. It was like stepping out of the shower into a surprise birthday party. Well, except for the element of death or serious injury.

The setting, 15 feet from my front door, was quite inappropriate for a rattlesnake encounter. My personal space, in regards to rattlesnakes, extends well beyond my yard. In fact, it's more like a small territory whose borders I'm willing to fight to defend.

Also, I was underdressed for the occasion. Sure it seems funny that anyone, especially unfashionable me, would worry about style at a time like this, but little canvas tennis shoes and summer-weight sweatpants don't afford much protection from fangs.

Neither did my dog Kuma's standardissue, hair coat. Since the dog landed as I did — spraddle-legged, wide-eyed and panting — I think she agreed that body armor would've been more befitting the situation.

Finally, the dog and I were occupied with other thoughts when the surprise occurred. Yes, I know that's how a surprise works. But I'm just saying it seemed a bit beyond the bend to, y'know, be doing normal everyday things like walking out to the shop or, as in Kuma's case, gnawing on a lovely bone and then, whammo, be threatened by a poisonous snake. Am I right on this? I think I'm right.

So the recap is: I walked out of my house and as I rounded the shed, past my dog and her ham bone, on the way to the shop I stepped on a rattlesnake.

No, I hadn't seen a rattler in real life before that day, but some things you just instinctively know. Plus, they don't have "rattle" in their name for nothing.

What did this mountain-raised chick know about rattlesnakes? A) They are terrifying. Yes, check. B) If you ever see one, keep your wits about you, or the humiliating story will become humiliating legend as it is re-enacted for family and friends for decades to come. This was, after all, a mere 11 years after my family friend's unfortunate gartersnake killing/house destruction incident, and the story was still popular legend in my family.

How was I going to eradicate the threat from my yard without embarrassing myself? A pistol, of course. I'd watched westerns. I knew the drill. You wanna survive, little lady, you bring a pistol to the snake fight.

A quick search of the house that came up pistol-less reminded me that my .22 was on a gopher safari with my husband at that very moment. I was not happy.

In retrospect, I realized that, had I found the pistol, I would've clearly violated rattlesnake Rule B by shooting up the shed, the shop and the house, possibly myself. Nevertheless, I was unhappy. And by now the rattler had slithered into hiding among the dried leaves under the shed. More unhappy.

The hard-tined rake I grabbed for snake fishing was, I admit, much handier for this search and destroy mission than the pistol ever would've been.

Each rake full of rustling leaves I pulled from under the shed kicked up the adrenaline level in my veins.

Despite twitching from the high-octane blood mixture, I somehow thought to look for the dog.

She was sitting behind our car, peeking around the corner, still sporting the wide eyes of fear. She was an Akita, bred for generations by the Japanese to hunt bears. There wasn't a DNA marker in her for rattlesnake hunting. Fair enough.

As dusk settled on the land, I finally dragged the snake into the open and struck it exactly four times — enough to virtually decapitate it, but not so much to violate Rule B and incite a crazy-Pam-and-the-snake story. And I was satisfied that I had passed this test of my metal.

I was sterling. I was golden. I was ... ohmigawd! Freaked out to discover that rattlesnakes continue to move after they're dead. Rule A was proving too true.

Get this: Their bodies slither and their mouths gap open and shut in a biting motion, even when their head is attached to their body by only a thread of skin. It's fuh-reeky.

Unwilling to deal with the situation any longer, and yet unwilling to let the rattlesnake corpse slither away, I carefully impaled the rattler's head onto the rake tines to anchor the corpse to the ground. And thus it stayed until I dealt with it in the morning light.

Having committed this one act of crazy, I called the dog, and we retreated to the sanctuary of our home to await the stories.

(When you're lucky, your crazy flies under the radar at http://viewnorth40.

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