if he's got any sense all, he'll let that skunk come out of that garage whenever it gets good and ready." The officer agreed that was mighty fine
advice and quite sensibly left the skunk alone. Another creature we were often called to handle were snakes. For me, these were the absolute worst calls because I hated snakes then and still do. I'd much prefer to face a
man with a gun than a snake – any kind of snake – they strike terror in my heart. So it was with complete and utter dread that I approached my first snake call late one evening.
When I arrived the lady who lived there told
me a snake had apparently crawled into her laundry room and was hiding. I asked for a description and she said, "I don't know what kind it is but it's a big one." Just what I wanted to hear.
Not being trained as a snake
handler, I didn't really know what to do. So I played it by ear and got down on my hands and knees and started crawling around on that lady's floor, looking under the appliances and furniture. It was a small room, so it didn't take
long for me to ascertain that the snake was either too well hidden for me to find or gone. With a sigh of relief, I took my leave.
That was the night shift and I went home, got some sleep and reported back to work the next
day. When I walked into the station one of the evening shift officers was standing there with a big brown paper bag in her hand. She called me over.
"Hey, Carole, I hear you went on a snake call last night," she said. I told her I did.
""Well, I was sent out there this evening. They saw the snake again," she said. Then she proudly held out the bag.
"Killed
it with a machete," she told me. "I brought it back so you could see it." She opened the bag and, lo and behold, there was the biggest water moccasin I'd ever seen. The two of us were holding the bag and peering at the snake – she
was congratulating herself on being brave enough to find and kill it and I was thinking about how I was crawling around sticking my face to the floor to look under things while this snake was coiled up and watching me. I almost
needed Pampers.
Then – something happened that made the whole thing even more interesting: The snake moved. It wasn't quite dead yet. She screeched and dropped the bag and I put as much lobby as I possibly could between
myself and that snake. Someone else dispatched it – I don't remember who or how. But I know it was neither I nor the officer with the machete because we were both long gone at that point.
Yep, I was proud the day I received
my badge, and throughout my law enforcement career I dealt with a number of dangerous people and situations. But none of them made me move quite as fast as that "dead" snake.
