Gary Reeder
being we are telling tales that are mostly true
Wednesday, February 02, 2022, 15:57

I might as well pass along a couple.
Early 1960s I was a teenager and spent a lot of time wandering our local creeks snake hunting. My Dad had a funky little 22 pistol but I never took it with me as I was normally wading creeks looking for snakes and if I lost it I would be in deep pucky. Dad had a couple of Colts that were somehow lost on our trip back from Italy the year before so all he had was the little single action 22.
Anyway all I took with me was a machete. That day a friend and I were working the creek banks for water moccasins. He liked to walk the edges of the creek banks looking for big snakes sunning on the flat rocks while I liked to wade the creeks in about 2 feet of water. If I was lucky I could find a few big snakes sunning on trees hanging over the water.
This day was were working the creek and I spotted a big tree that had fallen over the creek. There was a big snake on the tree catching some sun. He was a big cotton mouth so I started easing quietly thru the water sneaking up on him. The water was flowing toward me so it didn't make too much noise over what the water itself made. The big snake was lying with his head faced away from me so I hoped he wouldn't see or hear me. As I got to about a machete's length away from he he somehow sensed me and turned toward me with that pure white mouth open. I chopped down on him with the machete just as he moved. I saw the machete hit him about 6 or 8 inches from his tail end chopping that much of his tail off. The rest of him, the biting end, fell into the water. The bad part was the water was flowing toward me and that snake was highly pissed off and somewhere just below my manhood, or boyhood. My friend on the bank said I had something in common with Jesus that day as I walked on the water getting out from near that snake. I was probably 10 feet from the bank and I am fairly sure I made it in 2 leaps.
We hunted that section of the creek several times after that and I always watched to see if that tail-less cotton mouth was around just waiting for me. We never saw him again and it was just as well.

On another trip on a big creek in Hickman County Tennessee, a couple of friends and I would gather on weekends and canoe down the creek just having fun. We all carried guns and a little fishing gear and some lunch and drinks. On one of them I was with Kase in my 17 foot square stern cruising canoe. One of my fiends was there with his wife and he was absolutely scared to death of snakes. I had picked up one of those big thick rubber snakes somewhere and it was extremely realistic. You could lay it down and it would wiggle for a moment or two. I had it with me with the intent of causing some havoc. As our canoes came close together where the creek got down to only about 5 or 6 feet wide, I reached over the side of the canoe with the snake in my hands. I splashed it several times like I had caught it and yelled at my buddy to look what a big cotton mouth I had caught. He started screaming to keep it sway from him. I said "here take a look at it" and pitched it over into his canoe. He started screaming and shoving himself over the seat into the back of the canoe yelling for his wife to row. He pulled a 45 out and put 3 holes in the bottom of the canoe "killing" my snake. As the canoe started taking on water I reached over and grabbed the point of the bow of his canoe and started pulling it toward the bank. I was sorta glad he hadn't turned the 45 toward me. But he was just concerned with that dead snake. As we got the canoe on the bank and he had calmed down to only calling be 5 or 6 letter names I cut down a willow bush and cut 2 inch pieces and hammered them into the holes in the canoe. The plugs held long enough for us to get back to the place where our Jeeps were parked. I paid for having the holes patched in his canoe but he didn't talk to me much for a couple of weeks.