63 Days

I heard it before I saw it. It kind of sounded like something was being dragged through the sand next to my head. I blinked a few times, the early morning light peering over the red cliffs just outside my little sleeping spot. When I focused my eyes, I could see it.

It was a snake. Fabulous.

Slowly, I sat up, the snake looking at me a little bit. It kind of looked like it was trying to intentionally ignore the fact that I was there. I now wondered if I had been sleeping in its home, if I had inhabited its space, an uninvited guest. It started to shake its tail. This was something I was familiar with, which didn’t make me feel any safer, but instead it made me panic a little. When you grow up in the desert, you learn things about the plants and animals around you. This was a rattler, not a very big one, but a rattler none the less.

One summer when I was little, my friends and I went out in the desert by my house. I was friends with mostly boys, because I thought boys were more fun to spend my days with. There was always a lot or two around our house that was desert and full of bushes and rocks, so we would go out into the desert fields and build our forts, fight our battles and learn about each other.

One day, the boys and I were out, putting rocks in piles, stacking plywood we’d found at the edge of the road into makeshift forts. I was the organizer as expected, me being the girl and all. I was also pretty outgoing, and none of the boys ever wanted to argue with me.

“Guys, lift that board over these two piles of rocks, this will keep the wind and rain out,” I’d order.

“Hey, bring that box over here, let’s use that as a floor,” I’d suggest.

Soon, a wonderful shelter was in front of us. We stood back, admiring the fortress that we’d created. Quiet came over us as usual, and we gave our moment of silence as was typical for our little gang. That’s when we heard it.

At first, we thought it was one of us. I looked at Paul, Paul looked at Mark, Mark looked at Sam, and Sam looked at me. After a brief questioning of each other, we heard it again.

My eyes darted over to where we’d lifted the scrap of plywood. Sam headed over there as if he’d read my thoughts.

“Guys,” he whispered, “c’mere…hurry.”

We walked over to where he was standing. A hole was dug out between a yucca and a white caliche rock. We all froze. I felt my heart go immediately into my throat.

“Shoot,” Paul hissed. “We’re so dead. Now what are we gonna do? Where is it? You guys see it yet?”

We all carefully started to look around. I couldn’t see much of anything except for sand and rocks. Out in the desert, everything starts to blend into the same color. It almost puts you in a trance.

Finally, Mark called “HOLY COW! Guys! I found it!”

We ran over to where he was standing. He’d picked up a stick and was pointing at it with the narrow end of a wooden stake that he’d obviously picked up off of the ground. As he was talking to us, the rattle started again.

The snake was coiled up, its rattle beginning to stand up in the air. I’d never seen a snake do that before and it was almost more intimidating to see that rattle go into the air than it was to see the mouth slowly opening.

Did you know that rattle snakes hiss? It seemed like there was noise coming out of both ends, the rattles moving quickly and the mouth letting a slight burst of air out as it sat its head up toward us.

“These things can kill you!” Mark said, looking over at us.

Just as he said it, the snake leaped into the air at the stick, its movement almost too fast to catch. We all jumped and screamed, suddenly, like a pack of girls. We ran a tiny ways back to regroup. After a few moments of discussion, we decided that even if we weren’t out to bother the snake, it definitely didn’t want us around.

We left our fort, surrendering to the most real adversary we’d ever encountered. That night, I thought about how close we’d come to getting hurt. I couldn’t believe that right there in “our” desert, there were creatures that could really hurt us. It seemed so strange. It changed the way I thought about my immediate environment.

As the memory faded of the boys and I in the desert, I saw the snake start to move a bit closer to me. I glanced up a bit and noticed the tarp I’d put up the night before. As I’d layed down that night, I put the tarp up as a wall, to block out wind blown rain. I anchored it on the edge of the wall with a rock the size of a large watermelon and it was balanced on top of the tarp, holding it down.

My mind moved quickly and I waited for the snake to get a few inches closer before I grabbed the bottom. I pulled lightly at first, getting no result, but then when I saw that the snake had seen me move and had made a more brisk move toward my calf, I pulled the tarp with a quick jerk. The rock came down, like I’d hoped. It landed on the head of the snake.

I don’t like to kill living things. I don’t like euthanasia, I’m not in favor of hunting for sport, but can I tell you…the rush I felt when I killed that snake was like a drug.