Gary Reeder
back years ago I was visiting my parents just outside
Monday, July 19, 2021, 11:05

Nashville. My Dad and I did a lot of fishing and hunting in my early years and when I would take a weekend off from the radio station that I happened to be working for at the time we would do one of the other.
On one instance the fish were going crazy over the Catalpa worms and they had a big Catalpa tree in the yard that was covered in the Catalpa worms. My Dad stood under tree while I climbed up the tree to pitch some of the worms down to him. I climbed out on one of the big thick branches and was busy flicking the worms off to my Dad when I noticed a big snake in front of me coiled up on the branch in front of me. He was obviously a big bull snake (also known by other names). I had heard that they were pretty docile so I reached out to move him out of the way. At first he just looked at me then as my hand got close to him he clamped onto the web of my hand. I started calling him foul names and threatened his whole family if he didn't let go. My Dad was hopping around under the tree yelling at me to not throw the snake down on him. The snake was probably 4 or 5 feet long and as big around as my wrist and had wrapped around my whole arm by now and was still latched onto my hand. Finally the snake let go and fell to the ground. When the snake hit the ground my Dad was at least 30 yards away hauling ass. I didn't mention it but my Dad didn't like snakes.

My hand was throbbing but I knew it wasn't poisonous so I went inside and poured alcohol on it and wrapped it with a bandage. I asked my dad if he still wanted to go fishing but all he wanted to know was where that damned snake went to. I knew if he thought that snake was still around he wouldn't go anywhere so I lied and told him I killed the snake. That calmed him down and we finally went fishing and caught several large mouth bass. The bite on my hand stayed red and swollen and took several days to get back to normal. Since then I leave them alone and let them go their way and I go mine. We pretty much don't have many snakes up at 8000 feet where I live but there is a garter snake in Colleen's flower bed that I see every now and then. But he is sort of Colleen's pet so I leave him alone.