a story to hopefully lighten things up...
Did I ever tell ya 'bout the snake I took fishing? I used to park my small
fish-n-ski boat in an open barn hall, at my Dad's. I had seen snake skins
shed around on stuff, but never gave too much thought to it, we have
plenty of big rat snakes around here. Well, one night, I was by myself
at Bay Springs, did not know anything about lights, submersible or otherwise,
so there I sat, on the front deck, rod in hand, tightlining a minnow. I had
caught several dinks, and got cut off by a couple of gar, a typical night for
me. It was so dark, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, and
there was not even the faintest hint of a breeze - DEAD calm. Bored, I had
got into my bag of junk food, and ate a Snickers and a pack of crackers,
and had dropped the wrappers down into the bottome of the boat. Well,
I'm sitting there thinking deep thoughts, and all of a sudden, I hear the
food wrappers rustling around! I knew right away, SOMETHING was in the
bottom of the boat. I reached down by my feet and picked up the flashlight,
and turned it on and towards the sound - here comes about a 3.5' rat snake,
all fixed to glide right up on the deck underneath my feet! I went to whacking
him with my rod, wonder I didn't break it. Anyway, he decided maybe he
didn't want to share the deck with me after all, and did a 180 and started
heading towards the back of the boat. All I could think about was if he gets
under something (there was an opening beside each seat back into the bilge
area) I am gonna have to ride 6 miles back to the boat ramp in the dark, not
knowing where he is... So I jumped up and took out after him with the dip
net - caught him just as he started into the opening, and raked him back
into the floor of the boat, right under my feet. By now, if I could swim, I
would have probably left the boat. But I don't, so it was him or me. I
managed to get him in the net, then the fun really started - I was trying to
shake him out into the water, and he was having no part of it! He started
crawling back up the handle, and I didn't have enough sense to just throw
the net, snake and all - FINALLY I managed to sling him out of it, SPLASH!
Then I run circles around the boat for 15 minutes, shining the flashlight to
make sure he wasn't crawling back in somewhere... Had two anchors out,
so it wasn't an option to crank up and take off real quick. Looking back, I
wish somebody had been able to film all that, I could probably have sent it
in to funniest home videos or something and done well :)
