Snake Slayer

Well the inevitable finally happened, I lost another chicken from my brood. The culprit was a monster 5 and a half foot black snake. He paid dearly for his dinner this evening. It went down like this, I had been planting peppers and tomatoes into the "salsa" raised bed for about 3 hours this afternoon and figured I should check on the girls. I try to make a habit of counting my chickens anytime I go out to the coop to make sure none are missing or hiding or in this case, eaten. I had been in and out of their outdoor play area 3 times filling their food and replenishing their water when I realized I was stuck on 23 chickens. Looking over the flock more carefully, I spied a large, shiny black shape amidst my girls up against the wall of the coop. I got over my disbelief quickly and realized it was an enormous black snake swollen wide after eating one of the hens. I wasn't as freaked out as I should have been, I was pissed off. I strode back to the house to grab some weaponry and called April's brother to ask which caliber suited chicken eating snakes the best. He told me .38 special would be overkill and to go for the .22 or a hoe. I thanked him for the advice and grabbed the Ruger 10/22 and made haste back towards the coop, on the way I grabbed the hoe just to be sure. When I arrived back at the scene of the crime, I was amazed to see my bird brained ladies standing all around the massive snake. One may have been perched on his bloated body but I was really not that interested in how dumb the chickens were, I was out for blood. I cocked the slide on the Ruger and leveled it against the intruder, the first shot went through the fat part of the snake in case my chicken was still suffering being digested alive. Then I left off three to the dome of the black bastard. To my amazement that just seemed to piss him off, he started slithering towards me and hissing. After emptying the clip into the serpent terminator, I was wishing I had brought the .38 revolver. I had another clip in my pocket but I was concerned about ricochet since the snake had advanced up against a metal plate I had used to seal off the bottom of the coop (without much success, apparently.) Instead, I grabbed the hoe, raised it and brought it down like an executioner; the hoe struck the snake and the metal plate about equally causing blood and sparks to fly like an Ozzy Osborne concert. When I was fairly sure that the killing machine was dead, I scooped it with the hoe and brought it outside the coop. I went back to the house to get my camera, a tape measure and a beer. While inside, I decided to go a quick Google search on how to preserve a snakeskin, thinking a hat band or belt would make a nice trophy. Once I returned for the triumphant photo-op, I was dismayed by the snake's inability to lay still. Out of mercy, I popped a few more rounds through his noggin to hasten his demise but he continued to writhe and slither out of my attempts to pose him against the tape measure.

I finally gave up and decided to take the boys down to the creek to cool off since it was near 90 degrees again. While we were walking back to the house, I heard April coming up the drive and hustled up to the garage to show off. She isn't normally too fond of snakes but made an exception for this one since he was dead.

I was determined to not let the terminator go to waste, so after a little more research I got down to the business of skinning and preserving his exterior.

Borax is supposedly one of the tricks of the trade for taxidermists, so once I peeled the epidermis off the viscera I tacked the skin to a piece of wood and coated liberally with 20 Mule Team powder. I left it to dry in my truck bed and after about a week of sun, I'm planning on making it nice and pliable with some glycerin skin lotion.

For those who hate snakes as much as my wife here's a butterfly chaser...