FAMILY STORIES

The attitude of most everyone in the Shiloh community was that the only good rattlesnake was a dead rattlesnake. They had not evolved to appreciate the fact that even a rattlesnake was an important part of the environment. Almost everyone had seen the snake milking show on TV or seen it at the snake farm place on vacation. The word was out that you could get a big price for a live rattlesnake. Well Uncle Bruce got this idea that he could capture some snakes from the gopher/tortoise holes on his farms with so many gopher holes and so many rattlesnakes; it should be a snap to make big bucks quick.

The technique used to extract the rattlers from the hole was to get a piece of garden hose and some gasoline and put the hose down the hole and listen and you could hear the snake rattle. Then you would put a few drops of gas down the hose and the fumes would make the snake come out of the hole. This sounded simple enough, so he got some gasoline and a garden hose and set out to get rich. He tried several holes and nothing came out, nothing even made a noise in the hole. So in frustration he poured a lot of gas down a hole and struck a match to it. So he could at least barbecue the sucker in the hole since he wouldn’t come out like he was supposed to. What he forgot was that he had spilled some gasoline on himself during one of the many earlier unsuccessful attempts to get the snakes to come out. Of course he burst into flames.

He and Aunt Maggie Lee finally got him extinguished and she took him to the doctor for treatment. The snakes lived to inhabit other gopher holes. I don’t know how the doctors stopped laughing long enough to bandage him up if he told them how he got burned.