Queen Snake

Have you ever looked a rattlesnake in the eyes? Have you ever stood and realized the rattlesnake was upright looking you in the eye? Have you ever been so close to a rattler that you can hear it breathe? Do those images make you want to pee and flee?

I live in desert country, have all my life. On hikes or walks through the land, I’ve met just about every kind of desert creature. Only one scares me every time: rattlesnakes. 

Rattlesnakes come in a variety of colors: green, blue, brown, black with silver diamonds, red or a combination of colors. It doesn’t matter to me; they all scare me.

I own some land in the middle of the state a couple of miles in off the highway down a dirt track. I can drive that track by starlight, it’s so dark there and the stars so bright. The property is a perfect fenced-in rectangle in the middle of thousands of acres of ranchland. There’s a horseshoe-shaped hill that rises about seventy-five feet above the rest of the property right in the middle of the rectangle.

About a year before I moved from town up to the land, I had a series of terrifying dreams.

Rattlesnakes, a dream:

Hiking through some rough country, I came to a dry watercourse about five feet across. It was about four feet deep cutting through caliche and some other type of soil. There were undercuts along the banks that cut in two or three feet. As I stepped to the edge looking at the cutouts across the watercourse, I could hear the buzzing of a thousand large insects. Strike that; it was the buzzing of dozens of rattlesnakes in a cutout just beneath where I was standing. In my dream, I became agitated, of course, and stepped back away from the edge. And woke up.

Rattlesnakes, another dream:

I was camping next to a grade break about three feet high. It was late and the stars were bright enough to see by. A four-foot-wide cutout about eighteen inches high in that grade break suddenly lit up and I woke up in my dream, rolled over and looked into the cutout. It went in fifty feet or more and the floor was carpeted with a brown writhing mass. I didn’t know that many snakes would fit into a hole like that.

I awakened panicked. 

As that morning wore on, it came into my mind that I needed to camp out alone on my property before the New Year. Take a ground tarp and blankets and sleep on the ground.

Picture this. After two nights of rough rattlesnake nightmares, I get prompted to go sleep alone on the ground in an area where snakes are known to thrive. Not a chance in the world!

A variation on the theme of those dreams repeated every night for another week. Each time I awakened, I was prompted to camp alone on the ground in snaky country. On Wednesday morning, after the ninth dream, I decided to go the upcoming weekend. The snaky dreams stopped.

Late Saturday morning, I drove north to the property. Three hours later, I got to the little town about eight miles from the property, had supper at the A-frame café in town, then headed to the property to get settled in.

Atop the horseshoe hill, I set up my little camp. It was going to be a cold camp because I really had no need for a fire. I planned to go into town for huevos rancheros and coffee early the next morning, so no need for a fire even in the morning. I laid my tarp out, rolled up my truck coat for a pillow and set out my blankets. Sitting in my truck until dark, I read my Asimov novel.

When it got dark, I got out of the truck, lay down on my bed site, covered up and fell right asleep. A calm, pleasant night.

A hiss awakened me. A loud full-bodied hiss that brooked no doubt as to its source.

I slowly lifted my blanket off me, sat up, and even more slowly stood up, turned to face to my left and became very afraid.

She raised and cocked her head back to get a better look at me. Her forked tongue flicked toward me. She opened her mouth, and her fangs were as long as my arm from the elbow to my fingertips.

Her unblinking slit eyes fastened themselves to my soul and mind. I stood there staring back fully aware that if I fled, she could strike before my next heartbeat.

Her head was wider than my torso is long, her eyes as big as softballs, her tongue longer than my height. Beyond and to her sides, her minions coiled and watched. Dozens of them gathered as far as I could see. Smaller than she, they were not small. None had a head smaller than mine and none of them blinked. No sounds, just stares.

I was very, very afraid.

She hissed and words formed in my mind.

“Your fear smell is great, a cloud extending far from your center. Yet you stand there unmoving, staring back at me with your fear and your curiosity. You stand there uncowed, unsoiled, and silent. Not whimpering or crying or begging or praying.

“Frightened, curious, patient. 

“Your bravery brings my blessing unto you:

“Going forward, you are selected to care for us, protect us and honor us. You know our habitat. Teach others how to preserve it. You know our ways, how easily we are frightened and how we strike in fear and self-preservation. Explain to your kind that we are reclusive and easily alarmed by anything that can creep up on us. Tell them to make noise when they hike through brush and to watch where they put their hands and feet when they are clambering over boulders or logs.

“When you see us slithering across the open, especially across roadways, guard our passage or somehow assist us in avoiding harm. Honor us. Remember we are creatures of the same God that created the sunrise.”

Her dry-as-a-summer-wind hiss complimented me but did not comfort me.

“You are now of the Snake Clan. You will pass unharmed by our kind. Thus say I, Queen.”

Instantly, I was standing looking across the hilltop at the starlit cedar and scrub oak. No snakes. I wasn’t expecting that.

Now when snakes and I see each other, they buzz to let me know they’re there, coil, uncoil and slither away.

I don’t care; they still scare me.