Snake - it's what's for supper

Several years ago, I was living on a couple acres but we had neighbors on both sides – the houses about 100 yards apart.
Behind the houses was a big wooded hill. We had our chicken coop up on the wood line.

One day my wife says, "I know where all my eggs are going - I found two big black snakes in there and they had eggs in them." You see, we had a hen sitting on a clutch of eggs and every other day or so, some eggs would be missing. Now we knew we were be raided by a pair of snakes.

"Did you kill them?" I asked.

"No, but I took them about 25 yards into the woods and let them go" she says.

"They'll be back" says I.


Sure enough on a Saturday my wife comes down from the coop with a 6 foot long live black snake in her hand. It had an egg in it.

"KILL this snake!" she says. (She's a lover, not a killer)
So I chop the snake's head off.

My then little (7 years old) daughter says, "Daddy, can I hold it?"

Now this snake was still wiggling as recently dead snakes are apt to do.

You know I let her hold it. When she grabbed it by the middle, both ends were touching the ground.

Next door, my neighbors were having a barbeque. He was a Major in the Army and had his whole office over. Now HE was cool - he shot everything that moved in his back yard and had killed deer, turkey and a bobcat back there. But the other families that were visiting him "out in the country" were decidedly urbane. My neighbor had a daughter about my girl's age....there were other kids over there at the barbeque as well...

My daughter says, "Daddy, can I go show Sarah the snake?"

heh, heh, heh - "SURE you can Sweetie!"

Off she runs to the neighbors.

I watched.
I listened.

Oh the screams
Oh the jerky movements of the moms AND the dads.
Oh the look my neighbor's wife shot me across 100 yards of pasture.

Priceless.

My daughter came back dejected - "They didn't like my snake, Daddy"

"Yeah Sweetie, some people are just weird like that".

"Can we eat it?"

…Yeah, she's Daddy's little girl...

We gut it, skinned it, cut it into six-inch pieces and soaked it in salt water over night. The next day I placed the pieces in a glass baking pan, brushed them with olive oil and sprinkled them with Italian seasonings and lemon juice.
Baked at 350 until it was “done”.

We served it on a rice pilaf with steamed asparagus.
It was good and when we were finished eating, we gave the bones to the chickens - kinda karma-esque.

I think a chilled Rose` is about the perfect wine with black snake.

Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. – Matthew 15:11

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If they really interest me, I may even post them.
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