Out on the road there one time in Montana, a bunch of the boys were traveling in convoy in a couple of SUVs, when they came across a rattler that somebody had run over with a car. The poor creature was still alive and writhing, unable to move away from its mass of crushed internal organs. One of the guys thought it a good idea to put the creature out of its misery, but they were unsure how to approach it, as nobody had a side arm or a good solid club of any kind. But there was a length of log chain in one of the SUVs, with a snatch hook on the end.
So maybe if the end of the chain were swung around to get up a little inertia, and brought down on the snake’s head, it would be crushed, and its struggle would be over.
So Larry, in best rodeo fashion, started by swinging the chain around and around over his head, and launched the end with the snatch hook at the snake’s head. Only, he miscalculated a liiitttllle bit, and in a deft application of the laws of physics, the snatch hook caught the trunk of the creature a little back of the head, pulling the writhing front part of the snake up loose of the ground, sending the head with its opened fangs almost directly at Larry’s face. Fortunately, both the end of the chain and the flying part of the snake shot past Larry’s head, landing in the ditch, where by unanimous vote, it was deemed best to allow the creature to die without further molestation from us.
And no, we hadn’t even been drinking. But on reconsideration, maybe we should have just kept driving back and forth on the remains of the snake until we were satisfied it no longer posed a threat to curious and incautious human beings.
Dayum, I hate snakes.
I can relate to that story. Reminds me of my friends and I when we were young and dumb.
Moral of the story: Let dying rattlesnakes lie...