A full moon every night
A number of years ago a young couple resided in a large white farm house farther down the creek. They had five very adventuresome children, especially the middle daughter Bonnie and her younger brother Joe. They swam in the creek, caught toads, fished and in general explored nature’s mysteries all summer long.
One day their Mother chanced to look out the window and saw the pair walking up the path toward her chicken house. The two were carrying between them a dead black snake that someone had run over on the roadway. Sure enough, when she went to gather her eggs that evening they had coiled the dead serpent in one of the nests as a joke on their Mother. She harbored no phobias about snakes either and merely tossed the poor dead creature out the back door of the hen house.
Let me assure you that most people are not that comfortable in handling a snake. I’m not terrified of them but I also do not pick them up or carry them around. My Mother was another story and her unreasoning terror was the source of a very cruel prank my younger brother and I perpetrated upon her one afternoon. I had just graduated school and was working at my first job. One of the male co-workers delighted in tormenting the women of the workplace with various pranks of different degrees. One week he had acquired a rubber but very life like black snake. It kept appearing in odd spots and when some hapless woman “discovered” it, a loud shriek ensued. When it appeared in my work area, I quietly coiled it into my purse and brought an end to his reign of terror.
Once I got it home I showed it to my brother and our evil plot was formed. Our Mother always gathered the eggs late each afternoon and would return from the hen house through the grape arbor and into the back of the house. We took the “fake snake’ to the back steps and draped it as to appear it was crawling from beneath the porch. Then we went into the kitchen and took up our post beneath the table which gave us a clear view of the pending action. There was action aplenty when Mother, carrying not only a fully rounded egg basket of hen fruit but also her apron was gathered full too, spotted the serpent and went into a frenzy. She screamed, dropped the wire egg bucket and most of the eggs in her apron spilled out upon the concrete sidewalk. She ran wildly to retrieve a garden hoe from wherever and we quickly grabbed the snake to hide our evil deed. We weren’t fast enough and were caught red handed so to speak.
We were made to clean up the egg mess from the back walk and the few eggs that were salvaged had to be washed. She notified Father and he sternly reprimanded us but I could detect a flicker of a smile and later that night after we were in bed I could hear him chuckling to Mother about the incident. That only incensed her more and my brother and I did not return to her good graces for several days. She could never find anything amusing that involved a snake, be it dead, alive or synthetic rubber.
My phobia isn’t snakes, its mice, so I love having black rat snakes on the property because they’re better mousers than any cat. I find the newly hatched gray babies early each summer. The mother hollows out a nest somewhere under a large stone where she secures her nest of eggs that number from one to two dozen. The eggs are creamy white with a leather like covering. Once she makes the deposit she leaves and never looks back. In the beginning the infant serpents are thread like embryos that actually grow inside the egg for about eight weeks. The stone is just the right thickness to absorb the proper amount of warmth from the sun and the ground provides the moisture so the eggs can have the proper environment to hatch. The baby serpents stay close to the nest after hatching and at first, feed on insects. They will double in size by their first autumn and the first winter they survive on their own by burrowing deep in the earth. The second winter they, by instinct, will find their way to a major snake den where not only other black snakes hibernate but also rattlesnakes and copperheads.
About four years ago I discovered a lithe long black snake inside my grain storage box at the horse pasture. She had been feeding on mice and I was careful not to disturb her meal time. About a week later I encountered her crossing the lawn. For some unknown reason I chose to follow where she was going. I was amazed as I watched her reach my tack shed outside the back yard. She never paused but appeared to flow up the side of the outside wall until she reached a small knot hole and disappeared inside the structure. Once more she was seeking mice to supply her diet. The building contains saddles, bridles and horse blankets, all favorite things for a mouse.
The snake became a regular traveler from the tack shed out back to the feed storage across the roadway. Her hue was actually a blue black and she glowed with a luster of a new gun barrel. Her grace mesmerized me as I watched her glide through the yard on her regular trek and I finally christened her Cleopatra. Any other name seemed unequal to her queenly manner. I’ve had other reptiles here that have come and gone but somehow Cleopatra became part of the place as much as the three farm dogs. I often wondered if some driver would run over her as she lay soaking in the warmth of the gravel roadway but she always seemed to avoid a bitter end. Then one day in mid summer I noticed I hadn’t seen her for sometime. I was puzzled by her disappearance but surmised she had chosen to move on. Then I overheard my neighbor tell another man that he had solved the rat problem in his barn. He said he had captured a very large black rat snake in front of my house and had installed it in his barn. From that day forward the rats and mice were on the run so to speak. Somehow I felt relieved to know she was safe. Summer ended, Autumn returned and Cleopatra in her wisdom wintered somewhere deep in the warmth of the earth. I’ve never seen her again and I’m OK with that. As my wise paternal grandfather taught me; attempting to own something wild is as foolish as wishing for a full moon every night.
