Snake Bite Blues

The Planet Earth thing reminded me how different it was growing up for my brother and I. We lived in the country until I was 10 year old. We got 5 channels. NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, and FOX. That was it (okay, we might have been able to receive some Spanish channels, but those weren’t programmed into our TV). No wonder we spent so much time playing outside. I do remember watching 3.2.1…Contact on PBS in the afternoons. And Nova. But, our science education through TV was very limited. Even when we moved into town, and we got cable (all 35 channels of it), we still had only one Discovery Channel. I was so excited when the added The Learning Channel as well. Now, there are so many science, animal, discovery, and history channels that it will make your head spin. And to a large degree, I like that (especially since I have DVR and can record different shows at once and don’t have to watch commercials).

I remember when my brother got bitten by the rattlesnake. Have I told that story? Not sure, but if I have, well, I’m going to repeat myself. A few years ago, right after 9/11, my brother, Hubby (not Hubby then, but my boyfriend), and I went out to a local outdoor gun range to go trap shooting. After a while, we decided to move a table closer to put stuff on, so when Hubby and my brother went to lift the ends, my brother jumped back and yelled, “Ouch!” Okay, maybe not that word exactly, but it was another 4 letter word.

Anyway, we quickly realized that the little snake slithering away from his feet was the culprit. Now, here’s the part I’m ashamed to admit. Being the IDIOTS that we were, we continued shooting and having a good time and finally went home and had dinner with my dad (my mom was out of town at a conference). No one said a word to my father who would have probably been much smarter and taken my brother to the hospital. (And just to clarify, at the time, we were 21, 19, and 19, so we weren’t too young to understand that a snake bite is a serious injury). After we all went home to our respective dorms, I got a call from my brother. From the emergency room. It seems that his hand had started swelling up. He spent 3 days in the Burn ICU (that was the only place that they could provide the right kind of monitoring) reading War and Peace and being completely bored until his blood clotted normally again.

Anyway, the entire point of that story is that when my father did find out what happened, part of the conversation went like this:

Dad: So, I assume you killed the snake.
The rest of us kind of shuffled our feet and wouldn’t look at him.
Dad: You didn’t kill the snake?!
Brother: It hadn’t really done anything wrong. As far as it was concerned, it had only been defending its den.
Hubby and I agreed.
Me: We did take a picture of it.
Good pictures too. We made sure there were some shotgun shells in it so that you could get an idea of the size of the snake (which was small and about 13 inches long).
Dad: Unbelievable! Three people with shotguns, and you didn’t kill the snake.
By the way, my dad is not a big fan of snakes in general.
Dad: That’s the difference between my generation who grew up watching Bonanza and your generation who grew up watching The Crocodile Hunter. We would have shot the snake, and you just took a picture of it.

We still buy my brother strange rattlesnake memorabilia whenever we find it and give it to him for his birthday and Christmas.