[Granville-Hough] 29 Apr 2009 - 21 Jul 2005 - Snakey Folks

[Trustees and Executors for Granville W. Hough]

Snakey folks of Sullivan’s Hollow.

Whether we liked them or not, there were some snakey folks who lived on 
the Hough farm. We avoided them when we could, but we did have 
confrontations. To the east of our house, we had the Hollow and sandy 
hills draining into it. For some reason the copperheads and pigmy 
rattlers liked the brier patches in the old fields, said cleared and 
worked by slaves a hundred years earlier.. Perhaps the snakes preyed on 
the rodents who came at night to eat the fallen berries.
To the west we had the Meadow and its stream of running water. There we 
encountered cotton-mouth moccasins, perhaps the most deadly of all the 
snakey folks, and other non-venomous snakes such as the coach whip, 
black runner, king snake, and chicken snake. The last time we ever went 
to the Josh Lack swimming hole, we had a great time splashing about for 
about an hour, then we got out and put on our clothes. As we were doing 
that, we saw a black cotton-mouth moccasin swim leisurely across the 
swimming hole. We never went back there.
 From time to time we would hear about someone killing a coral snake or 
a timber rattler, but we did not seem to have any. We also heard of 
unusual snakes which we never saw, such as hoop snakes. The persistence 
of such stories in my childhood make me think someone saw snakes in 
copulation, where they might perform unusual gymnastics. Some of these 
antics have been filmed in recent years and can be seen on TV. No one 
knew in my childhood, who could or would tell me, how snakes copulated, 
but people did claim to have seen hoop snakes.
I believe the pit vipers (pygmy rattlers, copperheads, and cottonmouths) 
mostly hunted at night when they could use the heat sensing organs of 
the pits on the sides of their heads. When we encountered them in the 
daytime, they always seemed sluggish and easily killed. We never got 
bitten.
The copperhead is a coppery brown snake about four to five feet long. We 
also called them rattlesnake pilots for historic reasons. If you found a 
copperhead, said the folklore, you should watch out for rattlesnakes. I 
think the truth was that they hunted the same prey and wound up in the 
same brier patches with copperheads. The pygmy rattler was what we 
found, and they had small rattlers which identified them. They seemed to 
be nondescript sandy brown no more than 18 inches long. We killed 
copperheads and pygmy rattlers each year, especially when we gathered 
wild blackberries.
The cottonmouths in the old Meadow probably crawled up the stream from 
Clear Creek. Actually the old Meadow was the last definable headwaters 
for Clear Creek. The Cottonmouth is a black water moccasin, but may live 
anywhere along the creek bottoms. They seemed to live on frogs, 
crawfish, and minnows. They were four or five feet long and big around. 
We killed one or two each year. On one spring day, we burned off the 
bank protecting the Meadow and disturbed four cottonmouths, apparently 
still in hibernation. They struggled out of the burning brush and we 
whacked their heads off with our grubbing hoes.
The coach-whip was a snake half black and half white. It was not 
poisonous and hunted rodents in high grass, oats, or other grain. They 
could stand up and look over the tops of the grass to locate their prey 
when they were close to it. A big snake could stand up four feet in this 
way, a startling sight if you were a small boy just four feet tall. My 
father told the story of cutting oats with a reap-hook, with his sisters 
following, gathering and tying the oats in bundles. A coach whip reared 
up in this way just in front of him, and he automatically swiped at him 
with the reap-hook, taking off his head. But this was an otherwise 
harmless snake.
Our version of the black bull snake was called the black runner, and it 
was our most common snake. It was completely harmless and lived on 
rodents and, I believe, bird’s eggs. It was an avid tree climber, which 
I once observed at close range. My three younger brothers, Clifford, 
Donald, Roland, and I were playing along an old field, barefooted, one 
day when I stepped on something which squirmed under my foot. I jumped 
automatically and up came a black runner. It ran up a brush pile, then 
stretched up a few feet to the first limb of a small oak tree, then up, 
limb by limb to the top of the tree. We could see it was a black runner 
and not a cottonmouth. I was upset about being frightened and resolved 
to get even with that snake. I got a small limb and climbed the tree up 
to the point where I was about four feet from the snake. My beating limb 
was about three feet long, just a little short for hitting the snake on 
the head. I compromised by hitting the limb, hoping to jar the snake 
loose. Each time I hit the limb, the snake did indeed jar, but a little 
closer to me. As he got closer, he and I could see each other’s 
thinking. He wanted the trunk of the tree so he could escape downward 
safely. I could see he was going to use the trunk whether I was there or 
not. I decided on the OR NOT and scrambled down. Clifford, Donald, and 
Roland took up a refrain that I was scared of a little black runner. 
Indeed, they were right. I then threw my stick at the snake and 
dislodged him and down he came, landing on the brush heap and slithering 
away in the grass. Clifford, Donald, and Roland all told the story over 
and over about the day a little black runner frightened the wits out of 
Granville.
We never killed the King snake, a constrictor which ate rats and other 
snakes. I do not remember its coloration, but they seemed less afraid of 
humans than other snakes. They would show up within our barn, or along 
the fence rows of our fields. They could get six feet long.
We also had a dark-colored snake we called a rat snake, which we allowed 
to roam in our hayloft and corn crib in search of mice and rats. A 
larger version we called a chicken snake, which could kill grown 
chickens. I never knew whether we had two different snakes or just one 
which was a juvenile and another which was full grown. Our working rule 
was that we killed any snake near the chicken houses and tolerated any 
snake in the barn.
When we visited Cliff Hough on the old Hough farm, he had a snake or two 
which had taken up residence near his house. As a paramedic, he had 
learned to handle snakes, and had no fear of capturing them and moving 
them out of his yard. However, we had no such skills in growing up and 
had no desire for learning them.
But it is interesting to know that snakes we knew on the Hough farm may 
have descendants there today. They outlasted people.