The Minnesota Farm Woman

Although I was born and raised in northern Minnesota, I  lived in the south more years than I have lived in the north.  I heard many of my husband’s boyhood tales of rattlesnakes at his grandfather’s farm in Kentucky, the same land that we visited often for fishing trips or camping.  I have seen with my own eyes a rattler over six feet long, killed by a groundskeeper on the same fitness trail I walked every day after work until THAT particular day.  I once uncovered  a brightly colored coral snake while gardening in my own back yard, which is why I would stomp my feet and swish the hoe in front of me if I was in the garden, and sometimes when I wasn’t in the garden.  The neighbors probably thought I was doing some sort of odd ritualistic dance in my yard, but a lot of strange things happen in Florida and nobody ever gives you a hard time unless you have 13 items in the “12 items or less” express lane at the local grocery store.  The marsh behind the hospital where I used to work was a haven for water moccasins, and  the vibrations of your footsteps (if you were brave enough to walk back there) would  send them slithering from their sunning-spots back into the murky water. That’s why I laughed when my friend told me she was afraid of garter snakes.  “A little old garter snake?”  I scoffed. “Why, that little thing won’t hurt you one bit.”  I could say that with such confidence until I ran into one myself, right there in the chicken coop. He was HUGE! OK,  I’ll admit he wasn’t as huge as the six-foot rattlesnake I saw with my own eyes. Now that I think about it, he maybe wasn’t even two feet long, but if he was in my chicken coop, he was up to no good.  Perhaps he was sniffing out the new baby chick that Old Mum finally hatched, if snakes can sniff as well as they slither. Yes, three dozen eggs later, and she got ONE chick out of the deal, but it is a cute little thing and I’ll be DARNED if he/she will be that snake’s supper. I bravely grabbed the closest weapon, a chicken poop scraper, and wielded it menacingly at Mr. Snake, who slithered out of the coop.  Now I am seeing snakes in the garden, too. They could be frogs, but it is hard to tell the difference between a hop and a slither at first, especially among all the squash plants that are growing like weeds, not to mention all the weeds that are growing like weeds.  Just to be on the safe side, I stomp my feet and swish the hoe in front of me when I’m in the garden. A little ritualistic snake-scaring dance here and there can’t hurt.