Facing Death on a Dull Afternoon

In the late afternoon, when I have nothing else to do, it is my habit to walk the gravel road that connects my home with the outside world. As you might guess, I live in a rural area, an area with little doing on a Friday afternoon and few people to do it. It’s a good place to stretch your legs and go for miles without seeing anyone else. I like to walk for my health, fighting the battle of the bulge and maintaining my below-normal cholesterol levels.

When I walk, I don’t pay much attention to the outside world. I have a CD player blaring and I’m usually off in a reverie, my legs carrying me on their accustomed route like a pair of old plow horses. As I ramble, my mind wanders and I am easily startled by any reasonably quiet automobile. I stay on the left edge of the road, but these roads have no shoulders, so I stick to the edge of the gravled section and hope I’m semi-safe.

Seeing a rattlesnake suddenly appear in your path is like having your Snickers explode mid-bite. You don’t think for the next few seconds as your low brain sorts out all the bits and pieces and makes sure you aren’t going to be enriching the humus in the immediate future. It took me infinitely longer to stop my CD player and take off my headphones than it did to retreat a yard. The fast, dry chick-chick-chick (a sound absolutely unique to rattlesnake rattles), the even hiss, the dust-brown coloration, and the coiled, spring-taut posture informed me, from my cerebrum to my spinal column, that this was not a drill.

I stared. It stared. It was better.

It was also between me and the house. If it bit me, I wouldn’t be able to get to the house in time with venom coruscating through my vascular system, and none of the medically-trained people would be looking for me soon enough to get me to the hospital. If it bit me, I stood less chance than a crippled Jesse Jackson at an Aryan Nation rally.

I began to laugh.

The mosquitoes have been brutal this year, causing me to worry, vaguely, about West Nile Disease. I thought ‘Between the mosquitoes and the snake, I’m screwed.’ as I laughed to myself.

I looked down and fluidly picked up a palm-sized rock. I raised it to head-height and sighted along it. I thought ‘There’s no way I’m going to hit that thing.’ but my Neandertal brain, the brain that had survived millions of years of evolutionary pressure by being the meanest, cleverest, most paranoid naked ape it could be, wouldn’t let me drop the rock. So I stood, rock in hand, over a yard from a supremely pissed rattlesnake.

I knew that if I got within striking distance, I could forget about my plans for the weekend. I also knew that it hadn’t struck yet. So I figured that at the current distance, I was safe. Relatively speaking, that is. So I walked a half-circle around it, facing it all the while.

‘If there’s a rattler behind me, I’m fucked.’ That little thought caused me to bust up laughing again. I chanced a quick look: Clear. I backed up, towards home and a nice, cold Diet Pepsi. I resumed a forward-looking walk and began to think about Life, the Universe, and Everything, and decided that 42 was as close to an answer as existed.

I laughed, on and off, the whole way home. I suppose the laughter was just a stress response, but the stress I was responding to in no way ruined my meal. Or my relaxed evening at home with my friends. Or my writing of this post.

If it had happened to someone else I wouldn’t be laughing. I would be concerned and perhaps a bit frightened for them. But it happened to me, so I can laugh all I want. I guess humor is in the eye of the beholder, and seeing coiled death staring me down just strikes me as funny.

Get it? Strikes me? I kill myself, I really do.

:smiley:

Great story.

So when you go for real, you’ll be howling like a maniac, I take it.

Daowajan: I hope so. If you can’t laugh at death, you’re taking all this way too seriously.

I thought the fluid gathering of the weapon was the cool part. Also the fact that you left it alone when it became clear you did not need to kill it. :smiley:

Wow, good thing I live in an area with almost no snakes because I would be too scared to get the nerves to find a rock much less laugh right at it.

Hehe, best analogy I’ve seen in a looooong time.

What would have been surreal is if the snake, after making sure nobody else was around, had said, “You know, that rock isn’t going to do you any good.”

Or, “Give me your CD player and I’ll give you 3 wishes.”

“You need to find your soul mate.”

Derleth, can I use the sentence Gopher quoted as my sig? Please please please?

Courgarfang: Sure. Feel free. It’s nice to know that my near-death will give someone a really killer sig. :slight_smile:

Dijon Warlock: There really is a Simpsons quote for all occasions! :smiley:

Horseflesh: My rock truly wouldn’t have done me any good. I can code a mean do loop, but throwing a stone is not my thing.

Gopher: When the time comes and death is staring you in the eyes, if the time ever does come, you’ll be amazed at what you can actually do. Humans didn’t survive this long as a species by running away terrified.

GusNSpot: I had no intention of killing the snake, not least because I had no way to do it. Had I gotten close enough to throw the rock with any accuracy, I would have been struck for sure, and then it would have been an academic point whether my aim was true. By the time I was out of danger, I didn’t want to find one of my guns and go hunting: I was getting hot and sweaty and hungry, and I wanted to share my experience with my fellow Dopers.

Anyway, I bear snakes no animosity. They’re just protein machines, following a successful program that occasionally brings them into conflict with poor dopes like me who have forgotten everything evolution should have taught us: Stay alert, stay focused, and always watch where you’re going. Killing a snake would be no more meaningful than turning off a computer, and useless: I wouldn’t eat the meat or use the skin, so it would simply rot and feed the scavengers.