Confessions of a Ranch Girl: "Something's rattling in the freezer."

I am currently reading what has become my favorite book of all time. It has had me in hysterics and soon thereafter bawling like a person with manic depression. I am not revealing the title of this book, for fear someone has or will read it, and will thereafter never look me in the eye again. Anyway, this book has inspired me to write more about a subject that doesn't seem all that interesting to me: My childhood. After reading this book, I realize how funny things are several years after they happen. After you've been out in the great wide world awhile, you also realize certain things, like how odd it really was that your dad had a collection of snakes in the freezer.

I am not trying to insinuate that my parents 'ruined' me or that I had a 'traumatic' childhood. That is unless you think living with snakes in your freezer is traumatic. Plus if I tell any stories too offensive, my parents can just shake their heads and say something like, "She was too young to remember....it didn't happen that way at all," or "You know, she really wasn't the same after she fell off the barn on her head."

So back to the snakes in the freezer part. That wasn't just a attention grabbing line to keep you reading. When I was growing up, we had real snakes in a real freezer. Lots of them. Although I am terrified of rattlesnakes, frozen or unfrozen, my dad is apparently obsessed with them. Whenever we saw a rattlesnake, whether we were in the car driving or riding horse in the pasture, dad would catch the snake and bring it home.

It takes some skill (and luck) to catch a rattlesnake. I have never attempted this, but after seeing it done many times I consider myself a bit of an expert. First off, you MUST be wearing tall leather cowboy boots. Apparently rattlesnakes can't bite through leather, and if when they strike at you, you won't have to rush to the emergency room to get the anti venom. Next you walk up to the snake and say, "Here, snaky snaky snake," real nice and gentle, so they will be calm. Just kidding. Once you walk up to the snake they get angry, coil and make a loud eery rattling noise. To this day I hate grasshoppers because they make a sound similar to a rattlesnake. So now while the snake is curling around, you find an opportunity to step on its neck with the heel of your cowboy boot. Once this is done, you take a few deep breaths, reach down, and grab the snake right behind the mouth, thus prying the mouth open. Sort of like when you catch an alligator, if you pry its mouth open it can't bite you. Not that I have experience catching alligators either. But you get the idea. Now you have to transport the snake home. Sometimes this entailed my dad driving the vehicle with one hand and the other hand out the window dangling a snake. Once home, dad would put the snake carefully into an old gallon ice cream bucket, shut the lid, and stick it in the freezer.

Rumor has it, if you freeze the snake for less than 24 hours, the snake will come back to life when you thaw it. I think we tried this theory out once, but that memory actually does fall under the 'she was too young to remember' category, so I won't divulge upon that story.

So normally we would have 5-10 nicely preserved rattlesnakes in the freezer. I have no idea why this was the preferred way of killing them. Every once in a while, when dad was gone, mom would be getting something out of the freezer for dinner (yes, the SAME freezer that the snakes were in) and say "There are too many snakes in here...Scott, go bury some of these in the yard, your dad will never know." And the  freezer would soon be re-stocked with fresh rattlesnakes.

These frozen snakes had no real purpose or use other than occasionally fertilizing the yard. They were often brought out when we had guests, who would either be intrigued or terrified, and for some reason decline any food that was offered to them. When dad started a conversation with, "Hey, I got something to show you," I learned to cringe and leave the room.

I was always terrified of rattlesnakes, because you can actually die from their poison. According to modern medicine or rancher lore, I'm not sure which, you had two hours to get the anti venom before you keeled over. From our ranch house, it was a good hour to a small hospital where they might have carried the anti venom. If they didn't, it was TWO hours to the regional hospital. So when we were far out in the pasture, I was perpetually nervous about getting bitten, and glad that my mother was known for breaking a few speed limits now and then.

One summer Scott and my uncle David, decided to keep two rattlesnakes as pets. They made a cage in which I hoped was secure enough to keep the snakes inside. Another summer I barely slept at night after finding a live garter snake in my room. Speaking of snakes in my room, recently I was back home visiting, when I snooped in my old room to see what was there. On the closet in my room, on a shelf was a box. On top of that box was....umm....a small snake skeleton, all nice and neat. I have no recollection of it being there before, and that is something I definitely would have noticed. I have come to the conclusion that either a) one of my brothers put a frozen rattlesnake in my closet to scare the wits out of me b) it was just another live snake in my room, that died there and decomposed. Either scenario would be entirely possible.

Other things that might be found in our freezer: Vegetables from the 1980's (mom, just throw it out!), deer capes (the skin used to mount a deer head), and elk antlers (I'll save that for another story).

Another time when I was back home, dad and I were trying to find space in a freezer to put some meat in. We were in what we called the bunkhouse, a small building next to our house that was possibly once a garage, once a home and now mostly used for storage. There was a freezer in the bunkhouse, and dad opened it up to take a peek. It was pretty full. Dad mumbled a series of "humph's" and looked around until he pulled out a feed sack, said, "What do you spose this is?" and pulled out an entire antelope head, complete with large horns. For some reason I wasn't surprised, and seconds later looked at our feet and said, "Dad, there's a dead cat in here." There on the floor was a dead cat. I'm not making this up. Dad looked over and said, "Aww, I wonder how that got in here. That was my favorite one!" My dad saying he has a favorite cat is like a normal person saying they have a favorite sickness. As in, "That time I got pneumonia was my favorite!" So dad grabbed the dead cat and did what he did to all good pets on the ranch - threw it over the fence.

Somehow I survived childhood without ever being bitten by a snake. And now if you ever witness me doing something that normal people would consider 'weird' or 'odd' you can just tsk softly and say, "Well you know, she grew up with snakes in the freezer."