Our beautiful Sunday last week was suddenly interrupted by an excited Danny bursting into earshot.
He had come within a couple feet of a rattlesnake down by the river! As he hunted for ammo, Jonathan grabbed a long-handled cultivator implement with tines.
And all four of us jumped on the four-wheeler and took off across the fields, through the prairie dog town, through the fence gate, in between hundreds of prickly pear cactus freshly blooming with yellow petals, and down by the river where wild grape vines grew profusely.
We waded through tall grass and the ones ahead of me didn't seem to notice they had just rushed through patches of poison ivy!
But then one can do that if wearing tall rubber boots as Danny was!
This is the scene I came upon when I arrived a little later and slower than the others.
Danny said the rattlesnake had gone inside its hole.
We could hear its rattles buzzing!
And he killed it.
He probably wouldn't have if he had known that somewhere up in Pierre they will pay $1000 for a live rattlesnake so they can milk its venom for anti-venom. But we didn't know it until afterward.
That snake kept twirling and slithering even though it was as dead as a door nail.
We read that if you put the whole dead skinned snake in a carton, you must put a lid on the carton or it will "crawl" out!
We are learning many new things!
Very exciting things!
Things to keep our Sundays far from boring for teenagers!
Jonathan and Danny got online to find out how to skin and cook rattlesnake!
And then while Jonathan took a nap, Danny skinned that snake, rolling the skin on a stick.
Measuring the rattles
The skinned snake
gYes, we did eat some of that snake! I even tasted a tiny sliver of it just to say I had tasted rattlesnake!
In Sunday School this morning, (which happens to be Father's Day as I am finishing this post) when I told about the happy father/son fellowship Jonathan and Danny had last Sunday finding, capturing, killing, and cooking a rattlesnake, eyes in Sunday School class lit up. One lady beamed and said, "Rattlesnake is good!"
We're connecting with the dear people here, first over cancer,
and now over rattlesnake!
Who would have thought that the fellowship over rattlesnake would make a good illustration of the Father/son relationship we can have with God--
a God Who cares, who is interested in our lives, Who listens and speaks, who comes along to help,
who teaches, instructs, and even sups with us!
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