At the Fall ride and camp out, as it began to get cool and dark, Eddie and I decided to take a little four-wheel ride. We asked around to find somebody to go with us and Eugene McCallister agreed. We got a coat and some flashlights and took off up the hill.

Eugene had seen a nice set of goat horns over the hill on the horse ride early that morning. He wanted to go back and get them to play a trick on Tiny McComas, Eddie's youngest sister.

When we had gone to the Cranberries to ride, we came to a four foot wide ditch that was also about four feet deep. Some rode down and up and some horses were led through. On the return trip back over it, Tiny had gotten off Dicy. She was holding the reins as she leaned over to try to decide the best way to cross. Dicy head butted her over into the ditch and she jerked him in after her.

Eugene wanted to tie those nice goat horns on old Dicy and take his picture and show Tiny that she should call her gelding Old Billy the Goat.

We were easing down the hill on the Big Creek side. Eugene knew about where the horns were. Eddie and I were in front looking over the hill trying to locate them.

Suddenly Eugene stopped and got off. We could see him shining the light. Then the headlights flashed. Finally he yelled, "Come up here." We could see a mighty glow of the cigarette he had lit. It must have been a real drag on that smoke to create that much light.

When we got up there, Eugene said, "There is a big copperhead over there beside that head and horns. I almost stepped on it. I ran backwards up that bank!"

We beamed the lights about 15 feet over the hill and there was a BIG bright copperhead beside the log in a pile of brush.

Eugene asked, "Did you bring a gun?"

"No, I didn’t," Eddie admitted.

"How about a knife?" Eugene requested hopefully.

"No. I don’t have anything," Eddie answered.

"Hold the light," Eugene told me, as he picked up a couple of rocks. He went right back over that hill after the snake. The first rock hit it but not seriously.

"Now he’s pissed!" Eugene said as he took aim and threw another one after it coiled to strike. That rock hit, but in the soft leaves, the snake just crawled over through the brush.

"I'm not going back down there. That snake can have those old horns."

All three of us were a little subdued as we came back to camp. We ain’t never leaving again without a gun. Especially at night. We told Tiny and the gang gathered around the camp fire about our adventure.

"That snake can have those horns!" Eugene said as he lit another cigarette. "I have quit playing jokes on people. This time the joke is on me!"

2.

A FLUTTERING AT HAND

It had been a good trail ride up the hill from Creed Adam’s house where my husband and I had gone to ride with Creed and Kay at Wayne, West Virginia.

The four of us rode our gaited black horses down the blacktop past the school and the old sawmill. We crossed the main highway and rode down to the home of Brent Thompson, where he waited with his black horse.

Through the gate and up the hill we rode until we arrived at the top at the pipe line trail that we followed around the ridge and back off the hill. When we arrived at the creek, we decided to dismount and give the horses a rest.

The horses were all tied to trees and we took a few things out of the saddlebags to enjoy a snack as we sat in the grass in a circle and talked.

After eating, I leaned back and propped my hand on the ground in support as we talked. In a few minutes I felt a fluttering across my knuckles and thought a butterfly had settled on the back of my hand.

I looked around and saw a snake crawling across my hand!

"Hey! A snake just crawled across my hand!" I said, which got the attention of the other riders, particularly Kay.

Eddie casually said his usual comment any time I saw a snake, "Kill it."

Creed asked where did it go as Kay jumped up screaming and ran out to the middle of the bare ground in the trail.

"It crawled that way toward the creek," I answered.

The men all agreed that it was probably just a ground snake even though they never laid eyes on it. Meanwhile Kay remained in the middle of the road calling for Creed to bring her horse over there because she wasn’t coming back into the weeds and grass.

I was not afraid of the snake, but I was surprised to have mistaken the feel of a crawling snake for a fluttering butterfly.

3.

     On a ride up on the hill near our home at West Hamlin, West Virginia, we were coming down through the woods on the trail off the hill on Steve Beckett’s land. Eddie was in the lead and the mare and I followed a short distance behind them.

The trail was narrow but the hill wasn’t terribly steep. As I rode beside a little beech tree beside the trail, I saw a snake stretched out two feet on one limb and continuing around the little tree and another couple of feet on another limb in the front of the tree. The part that unnerved me was that the snake was even with my thigh and I was only a foot away from it.

"Oh, here’s a snake," I screamed to my husband, who had just ridden past it and did not even see it. Then he stopped his stallion and asked where. This had the result of stopping me beside the snake!

"Go on. Move. Let me get out of here," I said to my husband and his horse blocking the path.

Down the trail a way, I was able to stop and explain where that snake was located. I waited while he rode back looking for it, but he found it still stretched out in the little tree. He came back and told me it was just a black snake and it wouldn’t hurt me anyhow.

I was not about to ride back up there and to find out!

As far as I was concerned, I felt that old snake should have stayed on the ground where he belonged.

4.

DOES IT SEE YOU?

On a ride back on the hills behind our house, Eddie and I had ridden about four hours when I saw a stick stretched out across half of the dirt road as we came off the hill behind Keith Cook’s house.

I was riding old Tate, my big black walking gelding, and we were riding in front of Eddie and his black stallion. Then I stopped.

"Eddie, that’s a big, long black snake," I yelled back at my husband.

"Is it moving?" Eddie asked.

"No, but that’s what it is and it is real big," I answered.

"Does Tate see it?"

"Yeah. He sees it."

"Go on down and it will probably crawl on across the road," he instructed.

Now this snake was big but Tate didn’t seem to pay any more attention to it than he would have a roach. Since I did not have any part of me on the ground, I just squeezed for Tate to continue, which he did as unconcerned as he could be as he stepped over the snake and on down the road.

Well, we all have seen all of those movies where a horse saw a snake and reared up and dumped the rider down there with that snake and then ran away!

Then that rider stares at that snake in the eyes while it coils and hisses as it gets ready to strike and sink those fangs into the ankle of the human on the ground as the horse disappears into the sunset.

Usually another cowboy is along and quickly draws his pistol and shoots from the hip with a deadly shot to the head of the threatening, hissing snake!

We approached the snake and it didn’t move, so Tate just stepped over it and continued down the hill without incident.

Before Eddie and the stallion got to that point, the snake decided to continue his trip across the road and down into the weeds on the other side.

If I were writing fiction, I could make all kinds of comments on the dangerous trails in West Virginia and the wild rides I have endured.

Since I write non-fiction, that was the boring truth about that particular meeting with a big, long black snake.

5.

PLEASE LET THE 410 BE HOME

Eddie had gone on a trail ride near our house with a couple of friends. It was about time for them to return, so I decided to go out to the barn and be with my gelding when he heard them return.

When I walked out through the land that ran along the creek, I glanced over and saw a big pile of copper as bright new pennies. Then the awareness came to me that it was a copperhead snake coiled up beside the barn stall!

Since I was the only one home, it was up to me to not let the snake escape and us have to live with it! I hurried to the house to get Daddy’s 410 shotgun and some shells.

Our son Keith often takes some guns to his house for safe keeping when we are away from home. I sure hoped that I didn’t have to bring a 12 gauge to defend our barn.

It was with a sigh of relief when I spotted the little shotgun in a corner of the closet. I searched around and picked up three shells. That sounds like an act of confidence on my part at this later date, but at the time, I thought I would not need more than two and the third one was simply a spare.

Dropping the shell in the old single shot gun, I eased around the end of the barn and spotted the pile of copper. I took aim and fired a shot into the pile since I saw no snake head.

The snake was shot almost in two pieces, but it still was wiggling. I went into the barn and got a hoe to keep the snake from crawling under the side of the barn and into the stall full of sawdust.

Running back out to the snake, I pulled it back to keep it from crawling away and that was when I realized it was TWO snakes!

The uninjured snake crawled under the wall and disappeared. The injured copperhead was hissing at me with head raised.

I thought to myself, "I would like you better without a head!" I loaded up the second sell and blew it’s head off!

By this time Eddie and his friends had come out of the holler near the church across the field from our house.

"Melani, what are you shooting at?" he yelled.

"A snake. It was a copperhead. Come on over here."

"Did you get it?" he asked.

"Yes, but one got away."

When they got over to the barn, Eddie and Lyle and Donald Midkiff searched that barn over. They first checked all of the empty stalls and then went into the sawdust stall. They shoveled and waded and searched but found nothing.

That has been 12 years ago and we still have not seen the second snake.

My grandparents moved into this farm in 1920 and I never heard one story about copperheads on this farm. I lived here as a child from nine years old. We played in these hills and creeks, but we never once saw a copperhead. We have again lived here since 1987 and we have not spied a copperhead.

But I saw two in a coiled pile one day.

If I did not have a dead copperhead beside the barn, my husband would have insisted it was just a ground snake or black snake.

But there was no denying the snake I blew away that day was pure copperhead. I am glad that my Daddy taught me to shoot the old 410 when I was a little girl of 12 or so.

6.