The rattle of a rattlesnake has been the soundtrack of my life as I’ve lived in rattler country most of my time on earth, but it seems like lately I’m seeing and hearing more of them. In the last five years I’ve killed six of the cold-blooded killers within 10 yards of my front door. A friend who likes to go hiking says he too has seen so many more rattlers in the state park that he is now wearing shin guards that baseball catchers wear. It’s a good thing because one rattler got a nasty headache when it struck the hard plastic that covered his leg from his knee down.

I’m not ashamed to say that I kill every rattlesnake I can because the way I see it, it’s kill or be killed. My admission probably horrifies the animal rightists who live in big cities where the only snakes they come in contact with are politicians and bureaucrats.

One busy-body, who used to semi-like me, got word that I killed a rattlesnake and now won’t even return my wave because I didn’t call The Rattlesnake Relocation Project instead, which supposedly catches rattlers and relocates them. I tried explaining to my neighbor that the only way that rattler would even be in the same zip code by the time the rattler trapper got there was because I’d chopped its head off. I bet if her beloved blind dog got bit by one, she’d change her tune.

Speaking of dogs getting bit, I have another neighbor who went from being a snake lover to being repelled by reptiles when a rattler bit the nose of her dog. I think the only reason the dog survived was because it was a rough and tough Catahoula with a proud heritage of fighting gators in the swamps of Louisiana. Still, it nearly died and hasn’t been the same since. To prevent future occurrences my neighbor put in a rattlesnake fence, and it had hardly been completed when her dog got bit a second time. After surviving two rattler attacks that dog is now on a mission to rid the world of rattlesnakes and went from being a nice dog to a deadly assassin. Because of her dog’s new desire to kill rattlesnakes my neighbor sold her beautiful home, took her now-nutty dog and moved to a condo in a sanctuary city.

When I worked in the oilfields it was in an area crawling with rattlers. It was a slow week if at least one wasn’t killed and put in someone’s lunch box to scare them to death like they did me on my first day on the job. We killed so many rattlesnakes that I started collecting their rattles and skinning their hides.

On my first day in the oilfields, I was handed two things, a hard-hat and a snakebite kit which consisted of one rubber end that held a razor blade and the other end was a rubber suction cup you were supposed to use to suck out the venom after you’d cut a deep X through the fang marks. I always wondered if I’d have had the guts to cut myself if I was ever bit. A friend who retired from working in those same oilfields told me they no longer issue snakebite kits and said the old rules no longer apply. Now they tell you to remain calm (easy for them to say), apply a tourniquet and have someone drive you to the nearest hospital, or mortuary, whatever the case may be.

What prompted this essay was an event that made me even more proud of my wife, if that’s possible. She loves to garden but before she gets down on her hands and knees to plant or trim, she shakes the bushes with a stick to scare any snakes away. Today my wife casually mentioned that she’d killed a rattlesnake while gardening. At first I was leery of her claim but sure enough she showed me the dead rattler with its head chopped cleanly off. I wonder, how many women can say they’ve killed a rattlesnake? It’s got to be a very low number. Now, just like that Catahoula, my shovel-wielding wife is on a deadly mission and has embarked on her own version of the Rattlesnake Relocation Project.