If It Had Been A Rattlesnake

If It Had Been A Rattlesnake

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

            Those familiar dangers we learn from childhood on are such a part of our consciousness that they carry instinctual wisdom and warnings that become second nature. Growing up in the Milk River Valley and the foothills and plains beyond, we know to stay away from the River in flood, stay out of the pasture with the mean bull and don’t pick up a baby rattlesnake, cute or not.

            Such wisdom even tells us if the rattlesnake has just had its head chopped off, leave it for a while. Reflexive action can be dangerous. Let the dead snake alone, like three days, I say. For example, I would never in a million years smash a rattlesnake and immediately reach down to pick it up to put it in the trash.

            Along toward evening last Sunday I was working at my computer, finished my project, closed the program and stood up. My foot squished something crunchy and alive. Fortunately, my feet were clad in sandals. I lifted my foot and looked down to see what had gotten itself put into my path. Immediately I was transported half way across the room and expletives unfit for a family newspaper issued forth from my mouth. Where my foot had been nano-seconds before lay a dead scorpion the size of a small dog. I swear.

            The thing is dead, right. I’m bigger than it is and had squished it heartily. My heart slowed down. I grabbed a paper towel and reached to pick the it up and dispose of the carcass. The dead scorpion reached up as I reached down and stung me on my forefinger. I didn’t know they could do that.

            I left it where it was, carefully stepped around it and sat back at my computer and searched for information on what to do for a scorpion sting. There was a long list of things such as apply Benadryl, go to hospital, ice the affected area, go to hospital, carry anti-venom kit (That’s telling me to lock the barn door after the horse ran away.) on and on and on and go to hospital. So I did what any self-respecting I-can-take-care-of-myself-type person would do. I got ice and a rag and wrapped my finger in ice.

            A few minutes later Lupe walked in the door. “Hi, Hon. Oh, by the way, a scorpion just stung me.”

            “Where?”

            “There.” I pointed to the super-sized mangled body on the floor.

            “No, where did he sting you?”

            “Oh. Here.” I held up my hand wrapped in a rag soaked with dripping, melting ice, my finger numb and tingling and painful.

            Next I remember a series of disjointed scenes, like in a bad movie. I was tucked into the car, my hand still wrapped in ice, careering through the night darkened back streets of Mazatlan. I held on for dear life as we rolled around corners, taking every shortcut. I giggled. This drama hardly seemed necessary. It’s not like the scorpion hit me full strength. We rolled up to the door of the Red Cross Hospital.

            Flash forward. I was lying on a gurney. A nurse injected three hypos of mystery medicine through a tube attached to a needle attached to my inner elbow. I don’t do needles. That part was exciting. Still on the gurney, I had to wait a couple hours, for “observation”. Now and then someone came through and asked my difficult questions such as “Do you know your name.”

            Eventually Dr. Hector called me into his office to make sure I could walk and kept me there another half hour asking the hard questions, “Do you know your name?” He wanted to keep me six hours but I convinced him I could go home. Dr. Hector released me with medication, a list of don’ts which included no alcohol (no problem), no caffeine (painful) and no operating a motor vehicle (easy). He said to stay in bed three days (a joke, right).

             I thought the whole thing a bit melodramatic. One day in bed, okay. I had things to do the next day. A third day was truly excessive. I slept the first day. The second day I thought I would humor Dr. Hector so cancelled things to do and people to see. The third day I got up for an hour, yawned and said to myself, “I think I’ll just lie down for a little nap.” Several times.

Now that I’m back in the land of the truly living, I have learned a world of wisdom and knowledge concerning scorpions. I never put my feet on the floor without looking first. Never go barefoot around the house. Never pick up a dead scorpion. Maybe in three days if it hasn’t moved.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 6, 2014

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How to Teach Your Kids Not to Play with Rattlesnakes

How to Teach Your Kids Not to Play with Rattlesnakes

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Pam, Renee and I, fellow writers, challenged each other to bite the bullet, to submit a piece we had written to a publisher. I said, “That’s really scary.” “How hard can it be?” asked Pam. “Put a stamp on an envelope and mail it. Let’s do it by the end of this month.” This is easy? Mail off a piece of my soul? Or that’s how it feels to me. Then wait, chewing my nails, for my baby to either be “accepted” or “rejected”?



Renee reminded us how important it is to know our market. She considered sending her story about a mother beleaguered by her darling offspring to Parents Magazine. But she found that what they were looking for was “How to” articles, such as “How to teach your children not to play with copperheads.” “I can write that,” I thought. So I snatched the idea. Who better qualified to write this than I? But I’ll change copperheads to rattlesnakes.



This will be easy. I won’t have to do much research. I have the qualifications. I live in snake country. I once was a child. Never did I play with a rattlesnake, or for that matter, a copperhead. I call that on-the-job-training. To add to my expertise, I am the mother of grown children, none of whom played with rattlesnakes. So my teaching was successful. All I will have to do is dredge my memory for how I taught my children not to play with rattlesnakes.



My own training harkens back to my early childhood in southern Indiana . I was balanced on the hitching bar of the Farmall tractor as my Dad drove across our creek on the way to feed the pigs. I watched the water splash beneath the tires. My Dad spotted the water moccasin slithering through the creek, reached back and jerked me up onto the seat with him. He didn’t say a word. I felt him shaking. I instinctively knew that I was not to play with water moccasins. In fact, ever since that eventful morning, whenever I spot a snake of any variety, harmless or not, the sight elicits a sharp intake of breath and a simultaneous scream. You say it is not possible, to scream, an outlet of breath, and gasp, a sharp intake, at the same time? Want me to show you?



My daughter, my firstborn, learned to crawl in snake country. We lived a quarter mile from a rattlesnake den. My Siamese cat regularly brought me dead rattlesnake gifts, thoughtfully leaving them on the step into the kitchen. I showed them to my babe in arms and calmly instructed, in a soothing tone of voice, “See, Sweetheart. We don’t touch those nasty things.”



When she was three and a half, and we were living on the old Riggin place north of town, Dee Dee had her first snake memory/experience. She ran down the front steps heading for her little Shetland she called Pony, saddled and tied to the picket fence. As she tells the story, between her and Pony a giant rattlesnake, taller than she was, reared up, opened its mouth over a foot wide, hissed and rattled furiously. She screamed. Her Dad, gun in hand, came running, and shot the snake. To this day she has never played with snakes.



However, her good sense skipped the next generation. Both her children think snakes are cute. One day, when Jessica was four, she ran into the house, an entire nest of garter snakes cradled in her arms, excited about her new-found friends. Annie, now nearly five, has harbored Sally the salamander for over a year, so I am not sure any lessons will be effective with her. But, for the record, last spring she found her first snake in the shower stall. She tried to put it in the tank with Sally, but her father caught it in time and released it into the backyard wilderness.



My son Ben recalls that his first snake encounter came shortly after his kindergarten class had constructed paper snakes as an art project. He and his inseparable little friend Chantelle, both magnets for trouble, one frigid day were out exploring the foothills of the Little Rockies where we then lived, when they captured a slow-moving snake. They brought it back for Show and Tell. Ben tells me that I “freaked out”. I am sure that I calmly sat him down for a lesson about “good” snakes and “bad” snakes. He admits he never has had any other inclination to play with or otherwise handle poisonous snakes, so obviously my lecture was successful.



I know Parents Magazine will be delighted to receive my article. Now that I have done all the research, all I have to do is write it. “How to” articles are all the rage. With my talent and skills, I should be able to supplement my income handsomely. So when I finish my article on how to teach children not to play with snakes, I think I’ll write one on “How to Transform Your Life for Fun and Profit”.



Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

December 16, 2010
_____________________________________________________________________________________________