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.