Of the snake kind. The poisonous snake kind. The HUGE poisonous snake kind. The could have struck My Man or My Pickle, HUGE, poisonous snake kind. Geesh!
We went and picked my dad (and his quad) up in Chickenburg on Saturday and headed out for a little sight-seeing and some quail hunting. NOT snake hunting. Not that we've never hunted snakes, but that's another story for another time.
This snake sighting/killing was not planned.
Dad and I were riding a ways back from J and Pickle, trying to stay out of their dust. (J is My Man, for those of you who might not know. Just shorter and easier to write.)
We came up a hill and saw they were stopped. J had one hand up to tell us to stop and a drawn pistol in the other. Pickle was still on our quad a few feet up the road.
Looking down, I saw what the problem was:
Holy
The question of whether to kill it or let it go was easy. The rifle deer hunt for the area is on this week and the rattlers are obviously still out due to the warm days. If a hunter were to be struck and injected by a snake this big, he or she would easily die before being able to reach town.
Dad whipped out his 20 gauge (we were concerned about possible ricochet from a pistol bullet, so were very thankful to have a shotgun on board!) and shot the snake's head off. Well, mostly. I won't share any close-up photos of that. I wouldn't want to gross anyone out with the blood. But I will show you this: there's 2-3 inches of neck above my man's fist plus the 2-2 1/2 inches of head that were blown/cut off and the tail is past his knees. That's a big snake.
Why did I say 'could have struck My Man or My Pickle?' Because the only reason J saw the snake is that the nubs on his tires caught the snake, throwing it in the air (thankfully) away from them. If he'd hit it differently, it easily could have been thrown up onto the quad with them. I still shudder when I think of that.
I guess this is just proof that Jesus even rides on four-wheelers with you if you ask him to!
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