What's The Buzz

I don't believe I've mentioned yet that we live next door to The Snake Man of Albuquerque. His license plate says "Slither" He's been telling me for months about his rattlesnake-hunting expeditions, and about the feature story about him upcoming in New Mexico magazine, but until a week ago, I had never seen any evidence. Monday night he came home after a weekend jaunt, and called me over. He unloaded a tall wooden box out of the back of his SUV. It hit the driveway with a thud, and the box began buzzing.

He carried it into his garage, right up to the chest freezer, which he opened. There were a bunch of plastic "burlap" bags in there, which he said were all frozen rattlesnakes, all still alive, and a plastic 5-gallon bucket with a four-inch hole in the center of the lid. Dave opened the end of the wooden box and thrust his snake-catching stick with a loop on the end into the box. He snatched the loop tight and pulled up a five-foot rattler by the neck. It was writhing, rattling and biting the stick all the way to the bucket. After many tries, Snake Man finally fed the tail end into the bucket, which he said they couldn't escape from, and dropped the rest of the snake in. He repeated the process for two more future snakecicles. The fourth one wriggled enough to pop the lid off of the bucket! Dave looked in and saw that one of the first three had gotten out of the bucket and was trying to escape the freezer. He slammed the lid down on his stick, let loose of the fourth snake and snaked the stick out before any could escape the freezer. He smiled and said, "I guess the lid wasn't on very good." I guess not!

At least now I know that the Snake Man of Albuquerque is on top of things next door.