Snake!

I need to take you back to Hollinger's Island, when I was around 3 years old (before the move to Huntsville), because I forgot that I remembered something. I suppose that's better than remembering something that never happened; but it's not as good as remembering something that I had forgotten.

Anyone who knew me before I was 35 years old knows that I was afraid of five kinds of snakes: big ones, little ones, live ones, dead ones, and play ones. Make that four kinds of snakes. I never saw a little snake. This story probably explains why I thought all snakes were at least 12 feet long.

We were living in a brick house behind Hollinger's Island Baptist Church, which wasn't right on a canal or river; but it's impossible to get very far from water on Hollinger's Island, and water moccasins love it. Dad was in the back yard fighting a water moccasin (cottonmouth) with a hoe. Mom, Cathy, and I were standing at the sliding glass door watching this unfold. The door was open at least a little bit and the dog, whose name I don't remember, decided that she should run out to see Dad. Cathy and I started howling, Mom started calling the dog back, and Dad yelled at the dog to go away. No dice. The snake was between Dad and the dog, and the dog didn't see the snake. The snake's mouth opened so wide that it seemed it could swallow the world, and we could see that the inside of its mouth really was as white as cotton. The snake struck the dog on one of its front paws. This apparently distracted the snake long enough for Dad to chop it up with the hoe. The next thing I remember was looking at this strange goo oozing out of the dog's paw. I was very upset, and I suspect I cried a lot. I don't remember who took the dog to the vet, but the vet didn't do anything. He said the dog would either live or die, and there wasn't a lot to be done one way or the other. The dog lived, but hair never again grew where the snake's fangs had injected venom into the her paw.

That's why all snakes are 12 feet long.