[Granville-Hough] 29 Apr 2009 - Snakey Folks
Trustees for Granville W. Hough
gwhough-trust at oakapple.net
Sat Apr 29 05:58:37 PDT 2017
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:55:58 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: SnakeyFolks - 29 Apr 2009
Snakey folks of SullivanÆs 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, birdÆs 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 otherÆs
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.
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