Two Takes on Snakes
Uncle Jim Saves the Day
Early 1970s: We went for a picnic in the National Forest. The road started out paved, then dirt, then two tracks climbing through the pinyon, juniper, and cactus. “Uncle” Jim (my stepfather’s brother) drove his Volkswagen bus with his wife Wanda, their two boys, my two brothers and me. Just a little ways short of the picnic site Jim stopped.
“Look at that,” he said, and pointed out the windshield. There, coiled up 10 feet in front of the car on the passenger-side track was a big rattlesnake. It was mostly the color of the dirt and rocks it sat on, so it took us a minute to make it out. Not Wanda though. She shrieked. Jim put his hand on her arm.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said. But it was too late. The revelation of the snake on the path disordered Wanda’s world. She became — to use an old-fashioned word — hysterical. She did not have control of herself. She shrieked again. She flailed her arms about. She cried.
“Stay in the car!” Jim shouted. We’d never heard him talk loud and angry. But this was war. He went around to the back of the bus opened it, extracted a spade, and slammed the door shut. Seconds later we all watched him out the windshield. It was like being at a drive-in movie, only in real life. Wanda provided the soundtrack of terror.
