Snakes...

Last night we were having supper at a local diner and saw lots of our friends there that we hadn't seen in years. One of them mentioned a newspaper article I'd written years ago when I wrote a weekly humorous column. My family knew to run and hide and the days that my column hit the newspaper but friends...well, I did kind of sneak upon them from time to times. This particular article concerned Miz Mona Ozbirn's husband and my son, Lemar, who was a local policeman at the time. She asked if I could locate it so I thought I'd share it with y'all today. First of all, I should mention that this all went down twenty one years ago and that the amazing Miz Auda is no longer with us. We miss her ready smile here in Davis, Oklahoma!

June 15, 1995

My policeman son who had such a good time a few weeks ago when he captured a mean, vicious squirrel told me about another culprit that had the audacity to upset one of Davis's fine citizens. Seemed my son was minding his own business--patrolling the streets to keep them safe--when a call came that a snake ahs slithered uninvited and unbeknownst to Auda Ozbirn right into her house.

Now there are only two things in this world my son is afraid of and a snake is both of them. It wasn't easy for him to undertake the job,, but not being one to shirk his duty, he went over to Auda's house and hoped maybe they were wrong.

They weren't!

She told him it was a rattlesnake and it was doing a belly dance in her bedroom. He went on down the hall toward the bedroom. He was still hoping maybe she was wrong and it was a big mouse toting a baby rattler.

It wasn't!

There was a feller already checking things out in the bedroom Seemed he and several others had made sure it wasn't a raspy cricket or a "funny noise" or even a tree limb scratching the window screen. Now I won't call any names since this is a small town but that feller is Auda's son and he owns P&M Wrecker and Auto Center.

He asked my son if he was afraid of snakes.

"Yep," Lemar was very honest.

"Then jump right up here with me," he said and motioned for my son to stand in the middle of Miz Auda's bed with him. So here were two grown men, one in a police uniform complete with a gun and handcuffs, the other in some kind of garb that included a pair of yellow gloves. I'm not real sure if they were oven mitts or those kind that folks use to wash dishes.

However, neither of them were real excited about hopping down off that bed and checking behind the bookcase where the rattling noise was coming from. It sounded like the snake was about ten feet long and had a hankering for a supper of sautéed policeman's ankles or maybe grilled wrecker driver's toes. Maybe if they waited the varmint would die of starvation before they got him uncovered.

It didn't!

Someone handed Lemar a plastic back scratcher. He commenced to drag one book at a time off the bottom shelf with his handy-dandy claw. He said he'd flip a book and jump back, expecting the snake to jump out and chew his leg off any minute. Suddenly, they could see a portion of it lying there all coiled up and the man whose name I won't mention told him it was not a rattle snake.

"Then it must be a cobra, because there are only two kinds of snakes. If it ain't a rattler, then it is a cobra for sure," Lemar said as he reached out his claw to pull off another book. Now he did not know that the back scratcher had a battery hiding somewhere in the handle and the next book was one of those thick tomes. So he held on a little tighter and hit that button that made the whole thing vibrate in his hand.

He just knew that rattling cobra has jumped right up there in his hands. He threw the back scratcher at the wall and started off up the hall in a dead run--just about the time that Miz Auda came down the hall toting a big, oversized butcher knife. It was a no-win situation. Face the knife or the snake!

They managed to send that "rattlin' cobra chicken" snake off to eternity. And if the cruelty to animals want to come to Davis, Oklahoma and fuss about the way that they cut that snake's head off with Miz Auda's butcher knife, they can crawl up on their high horses and trot right on down here. In Auda's son's opinion and my son's opinion there ain't no wrong way to kill a ferocious snake!

And that folks is a true story! Snake killed. Not a bullet wasted and a little soap cleaned the knife up right fine for the next snake that had the audacity to slither into Miz Auda's house.