Black Snake....*Groan*

Hello Appalachia!

    I promised to have one more post for the month of May, so here it is. I'm sure you've guessed the subject matter of this blog from the title, and maybe you even got my terrible reference to the film"Black Snake Moan," which incidentally does not star a single snake. I've always been kind of weird, and snakes have intrigued me since my dad brought home a garter snake in a jar when I was probably around 4. If I can get in touch with some people, this definitely won't be my only snake blog. For now, however, I'm going to share with you the story of the black snake in my parents' backyard.

    My suitor and I had just arrived in Craigsville for a weekend visit with my family. My grandfather lives just up the lane, so we decided to pay him a visit. We hadn't been there very long, and I got a call from my sister. Apparently, my mother, who is terrified of snakes, spotted one slithering around our huge backyard, and freaked out. Given my way, I would have let the thing stay there. In my experience, mountain folk either love snakes or fervently detest them. I am the former, my mother the latter. So instead of having a full time pest control specialist living in our woodshed, she wanted it GONE.

    We went back to my house, and before we even got to the driveway, we saw my sister in the backyard with a curtain rod, and we knew exactly what she was doing. Now is a good time to mention that she was 4 or 5 months pregnant at the time. If a pregnant woman woman waddling around playing Crocodile Hunter with a curtain rod and black snake isn't a true vision of Appalachia, I don't know what it is.

    I sent my boyfriend into the house to get a pillowcase, and I went to assist my sister. By the time he returned, the snake had already slithered under the fence. Our yard is about an acre, and the gate is in the front, so our options were to try to run through the gate and around the yard, or to climb over the fence. As I mentioned, my sister was heavy with child and incapable of jumping the fence, and aside from my ever inappropriate footwear, I'm not very athletic. That left my boyfriend, who dabbles in sports and blessedly has a the muscular fanny of David Beckham. I'm getting off topic.

     So he jumps the fence after much badgering from my sister and myself. He hails from South Charleston, WV, and while I wouldn't call it urban, it's definitely not rural. This was his first encounter in snake catching. The only two people with any snake catching experience/gumption (my sister and myself) were trapped on the opposite side of the fence. Eventually the commotion drew the attention of the neighbors. This man and his two little girls came to see what was up, and we told him we wanted to catch this snake and take it to my grandfather's woodworking shop (a blatant lie, but he was the type of person that would rather kill a snake than go through the trouble of relocating it). So the Thomas sisters are on one side of the fence, mirrored on the other side of the fence by another pair of sisters, and we have these two men and a black snake in between. We stood with the pillowcase at the ready. The older neighbor gentleman used a plank of wood to trap the snake behind the head, which is the proper snake catching technique, and then it was up to my city boy-boyfriend to grab him and put him the pillowcase. He reluctantly grabbed it by the tail and cried "I got it!" To which everyone responded, little girls included, "NO YOU DON'T!" He may try to catch snakes by the tail, but I love him anyway. He eventually grabbed it properly and stuffed it in our cloth sack.

    Now that we had the snake, all we had to do was take it to the woods behind my grandpa's house. My boyfriend refused to let the snake in his car, even though it was secured in a pillowcase. So it was up to me to carry this angry snake in a pillowcase about a quarter of a mile, in my dressy shoes. The snake was pretty calm, but he was pretty heavy. He was about 4 feet long and all muscle. I arrived in the forest, huffing and puffing, and set the pillowcase down in the leaves and coaxed him out. He slithered off into the woods, hopefully to live happy ever after.

"I've been snake-napped!" 

    We initially wanted to call my cousin Jayce, who is an elementary-school-level snake professional. In my neck of the woods, little boys have some sort of creepy crawly in their pockets at all times, and Jayce knows how to identify them, catch them, speak to them, etc. I was babysitting once, and Jayce tells me to come out on the porch and look at his little plastic toolbox. He was digging around in it, and he when stood up, he was holding 4 live snakes at once. They were all harmless, like the snakes around here tend to be, but I was quite taken aback. I was expecting a plastic hammer, not a garter snake.

*Specifically points out the presence of adult supervision* 

     Children in my area are taught from a young age how to identify harmless snakes from dangerous ones, and I explicitly do not condone small children grabbing up snakes without the supervision of someone who knows what the heck they're talking about. However, I caught snakes as a child, and kept them in a box or jar before letting them go that evening. It's just something kids do in my hometown. Like I said, I think snakes are wonderful. I would rather have one black snake than a 100 rats any day. Thanks for reading. 

*I do not recommend bothering snakes at all. I certainly do not recommend allowing children to handle them unsupervised, and I encourage you to educate yourself and young loved ones about identifying common garden snakes from the few potentially harmful ones. A good rule for all of nature is "look but don't touch." 

Do you have any snake stories? I'd love to hear about it at mountainbloodwv@gmail.com or on Facebook, MountainBlood WV. As always, I love feedback and suggestions.