Sunday

I was Zooming with some old friends last week, and these pictures of me popped up. I was 13 when my father killed this rattler in our drive…

I was 14 when we caught this beauty. No way I’d do it today.

Back about then my two cousins, my sister and I were at Ross Allen’s Reptile Institute near Ocala, Florida. The snake milker there said they paid $5 for rattlesnakes. My sister and my cousin, Jeff, decided that they were going to hunt for  rattlesnakes and sell them to Ross Allen. They got boots and snake sticks, like they use to pin down the snake’s head, heavy coats, big heavy gloves… They even got stove pipes, sliced them, then wrapped them around their legs just in cast the snakes tried to bite them. Back then Anna Maria Island was about 25% jungle. That’s where I played. That rattlesnake in the picture came out of that jungle. My other cousin, Bob, and I tagged along in our shorts and bare feet, laughing all the way. After about an hour in the heat and humidity, my sister and my cousin, sweating like pigs, gave up, took off their leg armor, and went home. It was a great time. 

This is from April 1993