I gutted and cleaned a prairie rattlesnake today. I should have done it yesterday but I was too freaked out about it. I'm not afraid of snakes per se but when you grow up on a farm in the northern plains you learn not to mess with two things; badgers or rattlesnakes. Honestly, I really should have grabbed him yesterday right after David remodeled his head. I've always wanted to cook one but I was too freaked out. After killing the snake, he threw the body up on the hood of my old F85. I would have had to lean my body the snake's body in order to grab his head. There are two things I know to be true. All snakes are males, even when they aren't, and you must always grab a rattlesnake by his head, even if he's dead. Now, I know that a dead rattlesnake can't miraculously spring back to life and bite you in the face while you're attempting to retrieve him from the hood of a car but it's the same as knowing the garbage disposal can't suddenly turn itself and viscously mangle your pour little hand while you're cleaning it out.

When I was a small child I used to wonder if sharks were going to suddenly spring up out of the swimming pool drain and eat me. I'm an excellent swimmer due to the fact that I'd swim the length of the pool as if three giant sharks had actually been chasing me. I'd huff and puff and press my back against the shallow end only to end up back in the deep end when my breath and I found each other. None of it made sense. I knew sharks couldn't possibly show up in the YMCA swimming pool and even if they had, it wouldn't be safer in the shallow end of the pool. It's not like a shark is going to stop at the floating jump ropey thing that divides pools into shallow and deep sections.  

Anyway, back to the snake. I'm out there on the bluff not able to get within three feet of an obviously dead snake and cursing the prairie for being so god damned devoid of tree branches. I would have been okay picking it up with a branch If I had a branch. That way I wouldn't have to touch it and I would be able to whip it a good twenty feet out into the grass if it freaked me out too much. All I could see in a were tumbleweed stems so I went back to the house. It gnawed at me. Now, I must tell you, there are plenty of tree branches in the yard around the house so I it's not like a tree branch was terribly unattainable. Why couldn't I just pick that stupid thing up? It continued to bug me. I tried to convince myself that I shouldn't skin it right now anyway because I didn't have any glycerine to soak the skin in and I was going to dinner in a couple hours anyway so I shouldn't be cooking snake right now and so on and so forth. It still bugged me until I went to dinner and mostly forgot about it.

This morning I had to run errands in town so I didn't think about the snake until I pulled into the driveway just before noon.

Inner monologue is as follows:
"Well, I guess I could just drive back there quick and see if it's even still there. I suppose a raccoon or something hauled it off and ate it over night. Lots of things eat snakes. I wonder if they know to avoid the head. That would really suck if something was all psyched about a free meal and nicked themselves with one of the fangs while they were eating it and died. I wonder if that happens sometimes. I suppose it must."

And then I got stuck in the mud. I spent about fifteen minutes trying to get out before walking back to house to get the pickup. Once I got back out there with the pickup I realized it wasn't going to have enough traction to push the Mercedes out anyway.

More inner monologue:
"Fuck! Why did I drive a 3,000 pound car out in here in the first fucking place. Grandpa's going to wonder what the hell I was doing driving out here and then he's going to be pissed I rutted out the road. What the fuck am I going to say I was doing? Checking to see if a dead snake was still in the same spot it was yesterday?"

I debated calling someone to help me with the stuck car debacle but since I'd done something rather strange and foolish I didn't. I debated waiting until tomorrow to see if it would dry out a bit but the forecast said it was supposed to rain all day. In the end, I got it out by myself but the soil is like gumbo back there and I knew anyone who came out would see the big ruts I created. I grabbed a shovel and went out to try and repair the damage. Thirty minutes later it looked a lot better but I looked like hell. I was sweaty, muddy and soaked because the rain had started again. It was at this point that I decided to walk out and retrieve the snake with my shovel.

It isn't very easy to get a dead snake off a car hood with a shovel but by that point I was completely drenched, standing in the rain and not leaving without that bastard. I had to grab with my hand and put him on the shovel. Three times actually because he fell off twice during the trek home. Once I got him home and lobbed off his head I felt much better about it. I should amend that to say once I lobbed off his head, threw it in the trash and took the trash out, I felt much better. It was actually kind of a relaxing process.

Now I've got a snake skin tanning in a ball jar in my kitchen. I'm still not too sure why, but I'm glad I did it. Should be a little easier next time.