Look bitch, you knew I was a snake.

"...The doctor dug out that bite; but while the doctor doing it, the snake, he spring up and bite you again; so he keep doing it, till you kill him."
-Harriet Tubman to Abraham Lincoln on the necessity of emancipating slaves 

There's a fat water moccasin camped out at the little pool of water by the low-water crossing.  It's a sad, dwindling little pool, full of minnows and tiny frogs, barely a hint of Barton Creek.  I first saw a snake down there a few weeks ago when I trotted down the concrete embankment, getting ready to hop to a big rock and set off on an excursion through the dry creekbed.  Just before I lept, I saw the snake beneath me and backed off.  That one looked a lot like a water moccasin, but I'm not sure the head is angular enough. It could be a look-alike.  Whatever the case, I left it alone.

In the past week and a half or so, the fat water mocassin has shown up, and after coming and going for a few days, it now never leaves. This gives me a bad feeling.

The pool became the "dog's fishing spot" soon after we arrived. When we took our walks, the dog would head first toward that pool and dive down from the crossing into the water and stand there clumsily trying to capture the tiny fish by sticking her head under water, standing stock-still, then leaping across the pool after fish that were long gone.

I put quotes around the dog's pool because surely I understand that this is no more the dog's pool than it is mine. The snake was here long before and will be here long after. In ways, the snake is the pool.

I'm not a kill every snake kind of person, though I was raised with a healthy and religious distaste for the creatures. In later life, I did lots of conservation work and have moved or waited out my share of rattlers from the trail so that they could go their way and I could go mine.  It seems different when they are living right in the midst of your own stomping grounds, or I suppose I should say when you are living in the midst of theirs.

I'm way more likely to catch a spider and put it outside than I am to kill it.  I've been a vegetarian off and on for years, in part because I figure if I'm uncomfortable with killing animals, it seems shitty to close my eyes and take comfort in eating them.  [These days, that moral code has moved to the back of the line (along with many others) as I feast on all the meats.]

Still, I find myself wanting that snake to die.  I'm not even sure I want it to die.  I may want to kill it. I'm embarrassed to whisper these words to any of my old conservation buddies, but I've talked at length with my mom about the idea.

My mom hates snakes. She can smell them.  Joy Harjo told me once, as I sat awkwardly self-conscious at one of those MFA visiting writer dinners, that Indian women can smell snakes. Her mom could. She could. I don't think I can, but I don't want to find out.

The smell of a baby rattler once traveled all the way up my grandmother's stairs and woke my mom up, much to my father's annoyance. She told him she wasn't crazy, got up, turned on the lights, found the snake, and shot it.  Inside the house.

My mom and I can talk about these things. In fact, I was on the phone with her this morning--walking across the crossing, dog leashed up to keep it from meeting the snake on a fishing trip--when I told her, "There it is!"

It was so early and cool that I wasn't sure I'd see it, but there it was, tail motionless sticking up from beneath a rock.  I thought maybe it was dead, it was so stiff and unmoving.  Mom and I had been discussing what kind of gun she would bring me on her visit next month.

"Can you hit it with a rock?" she asked.

Russell Means as Warren Red Cloud in Natural Born Killers

Turns out, I could, but quick as I did, I walked quickly away saying, "Sorry dude," under my breath.

Anyway, I guess my point is that I feel bad for wanting to kill this thing, and I felt bad for hitting it with a rock (and also sort of impressed with my left-handed, barely-aimed precision, to be honest).  But then in my other heart, I have the wisdom of my mother, ready to blast the fucker away.  Maybe it's maternal instinct.