30. Snakes, Hawks and Kitties

Since the beginning of our time together, Judy has been deathly afraid of snakes. Not only the poisonous rattlesnakes, copperheads, and cottonmouths, but the harmless and helpful little mouse snakes as well. Naturally, with this morbid fear, she attracts these critters like a magnet!

We were riding the Talihina Skyline Drive down in Oklahoma one bright day when a hawk spotted Judy’s sparkling red helmet and decided to come down for a closer look. He dove right in front of Judy, about eye level and each of them got a good look at each other. Scared Judy pretty bad because in addition to not wanting to run into him, she noticed that he had something clutched in his claws. Yep, it was a snake! Still wiggling!

Really intrigued now, the hawk circled and came back down again. This time he nearly became a hit and run victim himself. Just as he flew back up, he dropped the snake and it hit the road right in front of Judy! Her tires actually squiggled as she ran over it! She was so shaken up by this that she pulled into a grove of trees to get away from him.

When we moved to Big Spring, Texas, we bought a new house right across the street from the Big Spring Elementary School. The house sat on a corner of a vacant lot, overgrown with weeds and cactus.

It was a late evening in October when we finished moving in. We were headed back to the house with the last load when we first saw the big snake! He was right in our back yard, buzzin’ up a storm! Our new friend from the Big Spring Road Riders dispatched him with a plastic pipe. Judy started her litany of wanting to go home right then and there. Willie just laughed and cut off the eleven rattles and handed them to me.

He said, “Judy, what you need is a cat to patrol your yard. He’ll keep all the snakes away!” Judy thought this was a good idea. We knew that school kids had to cross this field morning and evening. It amazed us that the bare legged little girls could run across this field and not get bitten.

Next evening, we drove out to Willie’s to select a snake fighter in the form of a just weaned kitten. That’s a lot of responsibility to place on a youngster! Judy had a tough time selecting one, feeling she was sending him to certain death in our back yard. She couldn’t choose between a pretty black and white, a tortoise shell and a neat little gray and white. Decisively, she made up her mind. She would take all three! If one’s good, three’s gotta be better! Right?

Off we went with the new protectors of the turf. We named them Patches, Tiger, and No-Name. They stayed in the garage at night and we fed them on the patio where the big rattler had been lurking. In this way they learned where the food and water came from and it also put them in prime hunting territory.

From time to time, we’d see them out in the field stalking something. Since we saw no more snakes, Judy liked to think that they were doing a good job. And so the winter passed and spring was well under way with no more snake encounters.

Next spring as I was getting the bikes ready for the upcoming riding season, I heard a dry rustling sound and looked over to see a horned toad scurrying across the driveway. I was not the only one who saw him. Patches, by now a big, fully grown tomcat, also spotted him. Horned toads are actually reptiles, and can best be described as an elongated pancake with a leg at ten, two, four and eight on the face of a clock.

The head, which looks like a goat, is on the opposite end of a short pointy tail. Harmless little guys, they keep the red ant population under control throughout West Texas.

As soon as the horned toad stopped, Patches was on him in a flash, grabbing him behind the neck and biting down hard! Sounded like someone eating a crisp apple! He hung on, tail swishing and growling deep in his chest. I watched for a while and went back to the bike I was working on.

It was nearly an hour before Patches decided he was through. He simply stood up, released the horned toad and walked away. This convinced Judy for sure that the cats were doin’ the job on snakes as well.

In fact, we never saw a snake again as long as we lived there. We didn’t see very many horned toads either.

J. Frank Dobie wrote a book entitled, “Rattlesnakes” and described a fight between a snake and a cat thusly. “When the battle is joined, the snake is tightly coiled and rattling furiously. The cat stays just out of range and entices the snake to strike. As the snake lunges forward, the cat leaps straight up in the air and hits the snake on the back of the head quickly, then leaps away. This fight continues till the snake is exhausted and then the cat finishes him off, biting him behind the head.” These life and death battles can take hours to play out if the snake is big and the cat is experienced. Usually, it’s over in about an hour.

While Judy knew our cats were doing the job, she had no desire to see such a contest.

Just before we moved to Kingwood, Texas, we lost Patches. He was sure pretty and lots of kids came to play with him. Maybe he just went off to be with someone else. We took Tiger and No-Name back to Willie’s so they could remain free. They had provided a valuable service to us by being protective and were good companions as well.

They had risked their little lives for us every day in a most dangerous game. We sure miss ‘em.