A while back I was looking around at stuff about Oklahoma and stumbled upon the Waurika Rattlesnake Roundup which is actually going to be this coming weekend. I wrote a little post about it then and as April came around, I remembered it was coming up and decided to revisit the website. I saw that James White and the Outlaw Handlers were going to be putting on a show – a “continuous” show. He sounds interesting and I guess he has been doing this snake business for a number of years – as in decades. I found one article about a Sharon Springs roundup in which he appeared, although then the group was known as the Fangs and Rattlers.

I don’t know much about what they do, but I think he puts a lot of snake tails in his mouth . . . and the rest of the snake is attached to each tail. I think I would be too nervous to watch. Actually, I don’t know if I would feel compelled to go if I lived close enough . . . When I was little and we would go to a zoo, I always wanted to visit the reptiles first. Was that because I was so frightened of them I wanted to get it over or because I wanted to look at something which could freeze me with terror.

I think the fact that they don’t have legs bothers me the most – the fast, fast slithering and the head and upper body being able to spring forward in the blink of an eye. I guess arms on a human could snap forward and punch me in the nose pretty fast, but I don’t think about that for some reason.

I can’t remember not knowing about the Rudyard Kipling stories of cobras and the days of ropes that could be pulled to summon servants and a murderer putting a poisonous shake through the hole in the wall so it could crawl down the rope and bite a sleeping person. See, I am upset enough to write run-on sentences again.

When my grandfather was farming and they cut and baled hay, my uncle said there would always be a rattler in one of the bails . . . that was his least favorite job on the farm – helping with the hay bales. Rattlesnakes are scarce here now – although a hundred years ago when my grandmother moved into a house by a lake, the family discovered a snake nest in the cellar. One big snake crawled up into a wall and stuck his head out a hole in that wall. My grandmother used a broom to keep hitting it back until someone came, got a shotgun and blew its head off. Wait a minute – they fired a shotgun in the house? That seems odd. Well, desperate times lead to desperate measures, I suppose.

Maybe I would be drawn to the festival as I am sometimes drawn to watch scary movies. I might have to duct tape myself to a wall for that weekend to keep me from going. Yet, I live in an old house with a fruit cellar – what if a snake gnawed a hole in the wall right where I was taped? Oh, Lordy!

Now I am thinking that these Oklahomans just go out around where they live and find these snakes for the roundup. So for me, if I lived there, every day would be snake day. I would buy a shotgun, maybe two . . . and wear boots . . . and not sit in the grass.

I am a wimp . . . or Indiana Jonesette – Snakes! Why did it have to be snakes? I hate snakes!