Mom And The Chicken Snake

When we still lived up the lane from granny, my dad was drafted into the Army. In those days they had the draft and if your card was called you went, by that time I think Sherry was a baby. I was around 6 or 6 and a half, when he left, and I hated to have him go. He only went to Lackland in San Antonio, TX but it seemed a long way to me and he had basic there and we couldn't see him at all. It was about this time when everything got rationed. Meaning you needed to have a stamp for a lot of things, and you only got so many stamps. We did alright, as my grandma Knapp mom's mother gave us a lot of hers, as she and James Edward mom's little brother didn't need as many as we did. But meat and sugar was in short supply, so mom raised chickens and we had lots of eggs and we ate them and mom sold a few. We also ate the chickens that didn't lay, mom would kill and dress them when she wanted to cook one. Dad had butchered a hog that winter also so we didn't need a lot of meat. We couldn't can jam as sugar was in such short supply and shoes were hard to come by, and my mom quit wearing nylons as they were rationed. So the chicken were very important to mama, and she took great care of them, so we had them to eat and so she could sell the extra eggs. We had a cow and a goat so we had butter and lots of milk. I got to churn the butter in a large churn with a paddle that fit into it that had an X on the bottom so the butter could be separated. I really loved to churn the cream. One morning early just as we were all getting up, Mama went out to gather the eggs and the next thing I knew she was in the closet trying to find Dad's 12 gage shot gun. She loaded it and told me to keep Leona and Sherry and she went back out to the chicken coop. I started to watch what she was doing out the little window in the kitchen, now mama only weighed about 98 lbs soaking wet, and she was a little over 5 feet. The next thing she did was aim that gun into the tree hollow and shot it. Each time she shot she fell on her fanny and she was swearing at something up in the old oak tree. It was funny and there was a lot of noise from the scared chickens and the gun and mom swearing a blue streak. The next thing I saw after about 5 shots and every animal in the shed was mooing or baa hing or cock a doddle doing. The commotions was so loud I think they heard it in the next county. Uncle Carl Dad's brother was down at Grannie's and so he came up to see what was going on. When he ran up my mom had just shot the gun for the 5Th time and was down on the ground on her fanny. Carl says" Sis what are you trying to do"? My mom let out a long bunch of words and said she was trying to kill the chicken snake that was up there in the hole of the tree. Now this was the first time I knew what had happened, Mom found a chicken snake in the chicken coop with a bunch of knots in him, where he had swallowed the baby chicken whole. Chicken snakes or all snakes for that matter only eat every once in awhile and so I guess the chicken snake which looks like a rattler, except his head is flat and round, not triangular like a rattler. But the color is the same. Uncle Carl picked mom up off the ground and told her to put the gun away and he'd get the snake for her. Mama said when she got back into the house, that the chicken snake had swallowed 4 baby chickens when she found him with the hen trying to protect what was left of her brood. Mom tried to get him with the shovel, or the hoe , and the snake slipped away before she could get him. He ran into the tree, and that is when she came in the house and got the shot gun. That was the maddest I had ever seen my little mother and she waited on the back porch while uncle Carl got him out of the tree hole and killed him with a hoe. She was jumping up and down when Carl finally got him. She put him out on the fence for awhile to scare any other chicken snakes away if they got a hunger for her chickens. I really loved my courageous mama and her bravery when it came to anything that she was supposed to protect, be it chickens or children.

The Cave and More SNAKES!!!!

I was about 8 years old when we moved from the house at Spicewood Springs to a house much closer to the pool we swam in and my new friend Ruthie Myrick just my age. She had 2 little brothers, called Sonny the older about 7 and Pud about 5, they always tagged along behind us and we were always trying to run away from them. Mom wouldn't let Leona run with us she was Pud's age, but I think mom was a little more protective of Leona. Ruthie said there was a big cave behind her property and wanted me to go there with her. She said there were lots of coach whips down in the cave. Coach whips were black snakes that ran on their tails and chased people or so we heard we didn't know what the snakes did to you if they caught you. I don't know what possessed us but we went down there. If mama would've known where we were going that day she would've stopped us. Mom always said God watched out for old fools and little children and I know He was watching that day. The cave turned out to be a big pit in the ground and it was dirt on our side and a cliff of rocks on the back side. We gathered a bunch of rocks down there and before you could shake a stick snakes started to crawl from the rocks on the back side and from under the rocks on the floor of it, there were a lot of them, all kinds, they hissed and jumped at us. We threw more rocks and sticks and what ever we could find. After awhile the snakes became pretty angry and started to coil up and jump at us. We got pretty scared and started to run, and by golly a couple had jumped from the pit and started to chase us, we kept looking back to see if they were upon their tails, No such luck we continued to run and went as fast as we could through the corn field and made it to Ruthie's back yard so out of breath that mama came out and wanted to know why we were running in the heat???? I had lost my bonnet in the race and she told me to go back and find it but I didn't go then, I told her we would go and look for it later when we were rested. She made us sit in the shade under the tree and drink some water. Much later in the evening when the sun went down we walked down the field and found my bonnet in the corn patch. I NEVER did go down there again, I was too afraid and I never told my mom what we had done that day. In fact I think this is the first time that I really told this story and told all of it.