00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Riggs from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and the country skills that will help you beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as part of Meat Eater's podcast network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I think I got a thing or two to teach you snakes. I can think a few words that will get your attention quicker than someone saying snake. Say it loudly and you'll get everyone's attention. Research says that we have an ingrained fear of them that is become natural over time. And I don't know if I agree one hundred percent with that, but I will bet that there's more folks that fear them than those of us that don't. And if you're in the woods a lot like I am, you're gonna see them, and you order to be informed about what you're looking at. More importantly, you need to be prepared and have a plan in the back of your mind for the ones you run up on that you don't see. We're talking about snakes this week. But first I'm gonna tell you a story. I was in high school and probably about sixteen years old, and I taken my mama's car to town to knock around with my friends on a Sunday afternoon, and on the way home, I saw a pretty good rattle snake crossing the road, and I decided to catch him and take him home to show my mama. Now I don't know why I did that, but in the heat of the moment, she was the only one I knew that I could show the snake to. Everybody else was gone, so I stopped her car and I caught him. It wasn't my first time ca the venom of snake, not even close. There wasn't any kind of snake that was off limits to my rounding up skills growing up. I'd catch them all and I never had an issue except cotton mouse had a bad musky odor that would stink up the world, and they did everything they could do to try to bite you. But rattlesnakes and copperheads they were easy pickings. I got out of the car, I caught him in pretty short order. Then I got back in the car with a four foot rattlesnake. I got to thinking that if he got loose in there, it's going to be a chore to get him out, and my mama would kill me. So driving down the road, I swapped hands from right to left, dragging that snake across my lap, and I hung him out the window for the mile ride to the house. I pulled up and went and knocked on the door, and I hollered for Mama to come see what I'd got. She opened the door, and I was holding that snake with both hands, one on his head and the other on his tail, so she couldn't see him wiggling. And when she said, oh Lord, where did you kill that thing? I dropped him on the car port and he bawled up and went to buzzing like somebody had kicked over a beehive. I said, he ain't dead. She squealed and came on glued and started swinging the room at me. I kept the snake in between me and her in case she charged, but she was on the steps going into the house. It wasn't about to come down to the level where me and the snake were. She made it clear that I was to terminate that snake with extreme prejudice, and that if she ever caught me messing with poisonous snakes again, that she'd save the snake the trouble and killed me herself. Three years later, and an untold number of snakes caught and released, most that she didn't know about. Wayne Parnell and I were driving home from my brother Tim's house when we saw the largest copperhead in the history of mankind crossing the road in front of us. We're setting the stage for buffoonery, y'all pay attention. Sliding to a stop, I got out of the truck to catch him. I didn't even have to tell Wayne to stop. He knew what was fixing to happen. And Wayne was a good coach and a cheerleader as he stood safely behind his truck, urging me on in the capture of that serpent. Not unlike Marlon Perkins to gym on Wild Kingdom. The snake called into his defensive position and I was moving in to catch him. I remember exactly what I was wearing. Anybody, I won't take a guess, bingo overalls and red high top converse tennis shoes. You probably didn't guess that, but that's what I was wearing anyway. I eased my foot up to a spot right behind that joker's head and slightly applied pressure. I could feel his body pin into the gravel road, and I reached down to grab him behind his head, and the most amazing thing happened. As it turned out, I was standing on a small rock and not the snake. The snake opened up his mouth, wrapped his little lips around my favorite thumb on my left hand, and stuck one of his fangs into the knuckle joint of the previously mentioned thumb, and to what must have been six and a half gallons of venom into my now astonished, yet a recently more educated person. I pulled my hand back and jumped away from that snake in disbelief, and I said, Wayne, he bit me. No he didn't, Yes, he did. Look it's bleeding. You're gonna die. No I'm not, but that snake is Forget the snake. We gotta get to the doctor. Get in the truck. You're gonna die. There's nothing like encouragement in the face of adversity. Wayne is driving like a wild man, and my thumb is starting to swell. I could see it swelling, but I was calm during the whole ordeal. I was holding my left thumb with my right hand and squeezing it as hard as I could to help stop the flow of venom. I wasn't afraid of snakes, and my doctor told me that not getting upset was probably more beneficial to me as anything. The ride to town didn't take very long, but I had to take off my watch after a few minutes because of the swelling. Wayne and I had pulled up to a red light. Sitting in the lame beside us was a deputy sheriff that both of us knew. I rolled down my window and I asked him to contact the hospital and tell them that we were on the way and what had happened. He got on the radio and told us to follow him, and he gave us a police escort all the way across town. They were waiting for me when we arrived at the emergency room a few minutes later. The snake had bit me probably fifteen minutes ago, and my hand was now almost twice the normal size. They stuck my hand down in a big garbage bag of ice and asked how I had gotten bit. And that's when I realized somebody was going to write this down and my mama was going to read it. I may have been dang near grown, but if she decided to give me a whooping for playing with venomous snakes, I was just gonna have to take it. I didn't want a whooping they hurt. A plan starts to materialize in my criminally clever mind, a story so unbelievable that they would have no choice to believe it. At that time, I was a bona fide member of the School Brothers Union and I chewed tobacco. I have it associated with having to spit tobacco juice into some type of receptacle, and I referred to those as a spit cup. And this is common knowledge where I come from. So I swing my plan into action. Doctor Chambers, Wayne and I were going down the road and I needed a spit cup. He pulled over on the side of the road and I got out. I reached down for the cup lying there, and the snake bit me. I never saw him until he bit me. The r had been one of chaos, with folks calling out procedures and this and that, and it was like a scene out of a movie, everyone dodging, dashing around in medically orchestration. And as soon as I said that, a hush fell over the crowd. Everyone stopped and looked at me like I just walked into a saloon where my wonted poster was hanging. Doctor David Chambers was my doctor and just happened to be there making rounds when the call came in from the deputy sheriff. I'm from a small town, like y'all know. He knew me, well, he knew my mama. He stopped what he was doing and he looked at me and said, you're kidding me. I said, no, sir, that's what happened. Now. I'm sure you're probably saying to yourself, why is this idiot lying about how you got bit? This excuse is worse than the truth. Well, you don't know my mama. The incident involved in the rattlesnake was the last time she chewed me out for playing with snakes. There had been countless others. I don't think anyone was buying the spits cup excuse, but it didn't matter. I just needed my mama to buy it. Now she had to be told him. Since I was busy getting tended to. I told Wayne to do it. Wayne didn't want it do it. He had been a good friend for the majority of my life and still is growing up. He was figuratively a member of my family. That meant that also that he had no immunity when it came time for Mama to dish out the whoopings of fact, he was well aware of. I don't want to call her. She'll kill me too. Come on, Wayne, somebody's got to call her and get her up here. Mama later told me that the phone call went like this. Mama said, hello, miss Betty, Yes, this is Wayne. Hi Wayne, We're at the hospital. Oh my god, what happened? Where's Brent? He's right here, he's all right. Well, why are you at the hospital? Well he uh uh, Brent kind of got snake bid. Brent kind of got what snake bid. He's all right. They're giving him some Hello. Hello, Mama was on her way. Wayne stuck his head in the room and told me he thought she was on her way and that she seemed a little bit upset. Wayne disappeared, only to resurface about the time Mama would walk in the door. Doctor Chambers told me that it was a possibility that I could lose my thumb. I asked him if i'd still be able to shoot a shotgun. He said, well yes, and I said, well cut it off. I don't care. He laughed and said there would be no amputations that day, and he didn't think it would come to that, but it was just a possibility. You're not real smart when you're nineteen. I would have really missed that thumb during all these years. I remember one of the nurses taking my blood pressure three times in a row. She told the doctor that something was wrong with the blood pressure cuff and they got another one. She said, there's something wrong with this one too, because my blood pressure was reading normal well. Doctor Chambers asked me if I was scared, and I told him no, sir, and that was the truth. I never got the least bit scared or nervous. I didn't have enough sense to Doctor Chambers told her that there was nothing wrong with the blood pressure cuff. I was calm and that was the reason for the normal reading that was all about to change. In Walkwayne eating a snicker bar and drinking a coke. He was grinning, just checking out everything that was going on. Then Mama rounded the corner of the door like she was running a search. One on the er. Wayne more Or lesstood an attention and said, high, miss Betty, I'll deal with you in a minute, was what she said back. This has not started out well, Mama. I wasn't trying to catch it, I promise. I was leaning down to get a spit cup off the side of the road, and the snake bit me all right out here on the thumb. It sounded even dumber the second time I said it, and she just looked at me. I could feel every eyeball in there going back and forth from her to me, like that scene in The Good and the Bad and the Ugly when Clint Eastwood leave, Van Cleef and Eli Wallach were giving each other the stink eye waiting for so I wanted to make the first move, draw their pistols and commenced to shooting. Watch that movie and you'll get a sense of what the tension was in that room is Everyone waited to see what she was going to use to kill me with. After she made sure I was going to live, she walked over to the exam table and said, I told you that stuff was going to kill you. I should have just went with the truth. I was going to be wrong either way. Doctor Chambers and the rest got a pretty good laugh out of that, but I wasn't about to laugh. I knew I was in for it. Eventually, the new would rub off that story, The exposed holes would be exploited by my brothers to my mother, and they would sit back and gleefully watch as she tortured me. It all eventually came to pass, and I was none the worse for wear. I spent three days in the hospital. I never got sick, and I still sport a scar on the favorite thumb of my left hand. There was talk of having to do surgery to keep my skin from tearing because it had gotten so big. But at the last minute, and right before they started getting the operating room ready, the swelling started going down. That snake was one of a jillion that I had caught in my youth, and the last live venom of snake I have ever touched. If I had listened to my mama, I wouldn't have gotten bit that day. If I had listened to my mama, I wouldn't have done a lot of things that I later got in trouble, for if I had listened to my mama, I wouldn't be talking to you now. She told me that hunting, fishing and running my mouth about it wouldn't get me anywhere. Hey mama, what's the name of your podcast? Is she going to kill me for that one? And that's just how that happened. September is a busy time in Arkansas and in other parts of the country as well. Leaves are starting to turn loose, elk or bugling bears are fattening it up prepping for the winter. White tails have lost the velvet off their antlers, and the creepy crawleys are at the peak of their activity. And of all those majestic creatures and activities I just mentioned, we're going to talk about snakes. First of all, we have six venomous snakes in Arkansas. The Eastern Copperhead, that that one that we just talked about, Then there's the Northern cotton Mouth. It's been my experience as these jokers have the worst disposition of any of them. Allow me to elaborate. Back in the eighties, it was in April and the opening morning and turkey season, and I was so fired up to go that when I stepped out of my truck to walk down into the bottoms where I was going to listen, I was about two hours early. It was way before daylight, and the only life I had with me was a little pen light that was so dim he dang there. Had to strike a match beside it to see if it was on. I stuck it back in my pocket, but I couldn't set it the truck. I had to go, so, taking my time because I had plenty of it, I made my way slowly down through the woods in the dark, navigating by a sliver of moonlight and just using my face as a limb detector. It was a very effective but somewhat painful way to find out where the limbs were. But I'd made that trip a million times before and I knew the way, so I knew that if I could just keep from jobbing both of my eyes out or ripping the ears off the side of my head, that when I got close to steep Bank Creek and heard the water running over the shallow gravel crossing, that I'd just wait there until goblin time came in the dark. Eventually, but not without a few stumbles and abrasions. I heard water running through that show where I'd planned to listen from, and I stopped in a small opening in the trees. I dug around for that little pen light, and when I did, I found an extra battery. I loaded that rascal and fired it up, and it was like I had harnessed the power of the sun. After my eyes had gotten so acclimated the darkness and tree bark, I also realized that the creek was louder than I had originally thought it would be, so I was going to have to relocate a little ways away from it when gobling time came, so I wouldn't miss a far away gobble. Because of that record, I knew that I had over an hour before I needed to move, so I turned on my light and I looked toward that creek that was fifteen yards away. The creek was about ten feet wide, and laying on the opposite bank from where I was looking was a big cotton mouth. He was cooled up and striking into the riffles of the water. It was weird, and I ain't never seen that before. So I took a couple of steps closer, and I saw that there was a bunch of little brim going through that shoal, and he was trying to catch him one. I bet I washed him, striking four or five fish and didn't catch a one. I grew weary of watching him strike out. It was like watching all the out takes on National Geographic when of them palace get away from the cheetah. I want to see something get in time to change the channel. I turned my light off and went back to stating in the dark, looking at the stars, minding my own business and waiting on daylight. I never gave him another thought, for I don't know it must have been ten fifteen minutes. Fella can only do so much in the dark past the time, so I decided to turn my little light back home to see what was happening on the snake channel. I shined my light over thereby Elvis had left the building. The little fish were still shooting through the rabbits, but the cotton mouth he was nowhere to be seen. I was a little disappointed that I hadn't kept watching him, because he'd obviously caught one and took off. That had been pretty cool to see. I shined left and right up and down the bank, looking for him, but I didn't seem And then, for some unknown reasoned that pen light at my feet. In less than a foot away from me was that cotton mouth, all cold up with his mouth wide open. He looked like he weighed ninety two pounds and his mouth was big enough to swallow us. Sit in here and her nest. I don't know how high I jumped or how high I squealed, but both of them were way up there, and when I came down, I monkey stomped that joker all over that little clear and until he didn't favor a drink of water. I don't know why he came to where I was, but he did. I've had them come to where I was before, when I was frog gigging or running the trout line at night with a spotlight. Regardless, they deserved some respect in space, and apparently I'd failed to one or both of them. Now, doing some research for this episode, I kept reading where contrary to what I just said, cotton mouths aren't overly aggressive. Well, okay, mister snake expert, maybe they're just really curious and like to show off their fans. Where's doctor Chris Jenkins when I need him? Speaking? To him. He's got a podcast called Snake Talk, and if snakes are your thing, it's very informative and you should check it out now. In all seriousness, that snake was between two and twelve feet long. Not really, he was about two and a half feet long. I don't think he was attacking me because he had every opportunity to bite me before I ever turned my light on looking for him. And there's no telling how long he'd been there. Either he was just going my way or was defending his fishing on who knows. He only did three things wrong. He scared me down near to death, violated the perimeter of my personal space, and he didn't wear a helmet, all of which were not my phone. All right, that's two of them, cotton mouse and copperheads. We still got three kinds of rattlesnakes. That's Western diamondbacks, timber rattlesnakes, and pigmy rattlesnakes. That's the little fellow. Not sure if I've ever even seen a diamondback, but I've seen a box car load of timber rattlers. They were very prevalent where I grew up. But I've never had a bad experience with rattlesnakes. I'd run up on them in the woods and could count on probably one hand how many times I've ever heard them rattle before I saw him. I don't go around looking for them, but when I'm in places where they like to be, I guess I'm subconsciously more observant. Diamondbacks are over in the western in the southwestern corner of Arkansas, and I just wasn't in my stomping grounds. Had a fellow in the neighborhood knock on my door one day. It was September in twoenty and nineteen. When I answered the door, I recognized him from seeing him drive by the house, but I'd never talked to him before, knew which house he lived in. I opened the door, and the first thing out of his mouth was do you have a gun? Well? That got my spidy senses tingling, and I took a step closer to him and quickly looked to see if he had one in his hands or on his person. Satisfied he didn't, and that I was now close enough to throw punch him off my porch if I needed to, I said, do I need one? That's when he told me about the big rattlesnake. He'd seen him a driveway. You sure it was a rattlesnake. Oh yeah, he's a big one. Well, I figured he saw a snake, but I doubted he'd seen a rattlesnake. I'd been here for nine years and ain't never seen one. So I followed him outside to look at the snake and was about to give him a lesson on snake id. I didn't bother bringing a gun when we walked him. When we walked to the mailbox, he pointed it to nearly five foot rattlesnake coled up behind it. I retreated for the twenty two You can check my Instagram and see the picture of him the snake, not the neighbor. Now, I want to say, for the record, I ain't bad about killing snakes. They serve a purpose, and he was just out making a living. Anything whose diet has rats in it is my friend, because I give no quarter to rats. Also, for the record, there's no difference in my mind when it comes to rats and mice. Rats or rats and mice are small rats. But he can't make a living in my yard when I got kids and grandkids running around. Life is hard it's harder if you're a rattlesnake and you trespass at Brent's house, a king snake or any other non venomous snake would have got a free pass anyway, That pigmy rattlesnake is as common as crickets. And lastly there's the Texas coral snake, of which I have only seen one in my lifetime. So by sheer law of averages and in my experience in Arkansas and in similar environments, if you come across a venom of snake, you're gonna be bumping into copperheads, cotton mouths, and timber rattlers more than any other. Like when I got bit, you seek medical attention at once, But what about your dog? When I'm coon hunting, I'm purposely sending Whaling down creek and slew edges where the bandidos roam, but also overlaps where the snakes live and operate too. It's bound to happen at some juncture, and when it does, you may not notice the effects immediately. First thing I do when I call Whaling in to go home is give him a good inspection before I load him up. When I've got him on the tailgate and removing his track and collar. I'm inspecting him for any damages he may have incurred while out hunting. When I get him home to unload him and put him up, I do the same thing again on the tailgate from his grill to his exhaust pipe. I'm looking him over and first thing. The next morning, when I go out to feed him, I do the same thing again. If I see some swelling, that's when I start my diagnosis. Me and Rex were hunting Whaling and his dog Shadow one night and they were blowing a coon track up in a big hardwood flat in the Cache River bottoms. Walking to where they were treed, we heard Shadow yep like he had something had hurt him, and then he went back to tree. Rex asked me if I heard that, and the one I said yes, he said, I think Shadow just got snake bit. We went on into the tree and they'd split tree at about thirty yards apart, and both of them had a coon. It was August and Primo Cottonmouth Country. We checked him over and we didn't see any issues. But the next morning Rex called me and said, well, it looks like Shadow got bit. His right front foot is about twice the size as it should be. He sent me a picture of it. It looked like he's wearing a boxing glove on it. Long story short, it wasn't a snake bite at all. It was a thorn off a black locust tree that he'd stepped on. And let me tell you, those things hurt. The thorns of the Robenia suiticacia commonly called the black locust tree or toxic and can call swelling and the cross which is tissue death a saw that won't heal. The vet couldn't find anything punctures, so he make sure hed his foot to see if he'd broken it, and found the thorn, and then he removed it. A few days of antibiotics and Shadow was ready to hunt again. So, if you have a dog that gets bitten by a venomous snake, and you're fortunate enough to know what kind it is, that's gonna dictate what your next steps are. I call my good friend and serial duck killer doctor Jonathan Bradshaw, DVM, the Sporting Dog Veterinarian. If y'all ain't following him on Instagram, you are to be. He's like a mild mannered Clark Kent going about his day to life in the city limits of Dogopolis until there's a need for heroics, and as quick as a hiccup, he's in a phone booth, putting on his cape and flying off to save the day. For real, He's always posting stuff on there about health care for you dogs that you'd normally have to pay for. Anyway, I hemmed him up and posed this question to him. First of all, here's the disclaimer. Good lord, the times that we live in, y'all, don't be jamming me of the dock up in the future saying y'all's device killed my dog. Well, ain't nobody got time for that. If you're concerned about your dog's health, told him to the vet. End the disclaimer. Now here's the question and his answer, Doc, do you have a general rule about treating snake bites and dogs? If it's a big dog and a little snake, do nothing? Or a little dog and a big snake do you seek treatment to me? Here's where snake idea comes in. It's very important to know the difference. Both cotton mouth and rattlesnake venoms are hematoxic and cast circulatory system and muscle tissue damage, including the crosis, but the rattlesnake venom is much more potent than the cotton mouth Enough rambling, Brent, What did the guy who knows sake? This is what he said, Unless it's a rattlesnake, I don't really worry about it. Benadrill is nice to give. Steroids are nice to give, but antibiotics sometimes really saved the day a few days down the road when infection from the bite sets in or sluggish blood flow settles in. Here's what he said about rattlesnakes. If it's a rattlesnake, any venom and extreme supportive care period. Now there's going to be somebody send me a message saying you don't need no vent to treat a snake bite. My dog got bit by a sixteen foot rattlesnake and we didn't do nothing and he was all right. Well, y'all also don't need a spoon to eat soup with, but it sure makes it less messy when you use one. Please don't send me that message or a picture of you eating soup without a spoon. Knowing the environment you're hunting in and what venom of snakes most likely in habit the area, will help you determine what level of care you give me. I'm going to err on the side of caution every time you you do what you want. Snakes are part of the landscape, and the struggle to coexists with the humanity started when that joker talked to even to taking a bite out of that apple. Dang girl, what was you thinking? Now? That was the first incident when a serpent caused havoc on the planet. But Eve made that choice. The snake didn't make her eat it. Fast forward to when I was nineteen and not more or less him the copper head up so I could stick my thumb in his mouth. He didn't make me do that. It was my choice, And like that old dude set in that cave on Indiana Jones, I chose poorly. A high percentage of snake bites a curve when we're messing with him. If you leave them alone, they're more liable to leave you alone. One more story about snakes and dogs. My brother Tim had a black lab that I've talked about on here before. His name was Zach and he was quite a dog. I loved that rascal. Everyone loved him and he loved everyone. But he hated snakes, and this was no entry level hate either. This dude was a Tier one snake hater. He hated them so much, especially rattlesnakes, that he would dig them up either the den, kill them, and bring them to my brother's porch and offer them up as a testimony of his hatred for old Jake no shoulders. He wasn't alone in this endeavor either. He had an accomplice, a half Boston Terrier and half Blue Healer named Fred. Don't even ask how that cross came about. Zach was laid back in about the coolest dog you have ever seen. His expressions reminded me of Eore on Winnie the Pooh. That dude was the epitome of chill. Fred was not. Fred was a hot wire And I'm not sure if Fred was nervous or if he was just really quick. But my brother is a gunsmith, and on top of repairing guns and test firing them, we would shoot skeet and everything else around there. We was always shooting at something whenever Zach and Fred were around. Every time time someone pulled the trigger and fired a shot, for ever to body Zack right in the rear end. Only Zack and nobody knew what. But back to the snakes. Tim told me it was a common occurrence to hear something on the porch and open the door to see Zach and Fred standing there, Zack holding a dead rattlesnake in his mouth, and he and Fred both looking like they just survived five rounds with Mike Tyson. Tim said, at first, as Zack said, it would look like a basketball, but eventually, after years of Zach's campaign against snakes, that the swelling wouldn't amount to much at all. It's pretty crazy when you think about it. Now. Did he build up a tolerance to the venom? He sure didn't build up a tolerance to their presence. Zach lived a long time, but I don't remember what happened to Fred. He probably wound up in the nervous hospital. He was definitely a good prospect for it. Anyway, Snakes are your challenged this week. Do some paperwork and learn about the snakes in your area and have a plan on what to do if you or your dog gets bitten. I see people on social media saying that the only good snake is a dead snake. Well that ain't true. They serve a purpose and they have a place. It's usually the best when that place is over yonder, but they do have a place. Be alert when you head to the mailbox. You never know I might be lurking there. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful.

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