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Get Your Gun, John!
Shorty screamed!
Shorty and Ben were living in a cottage at Papy’s Landing. My wife Jane and I were on our sailboat Dursmirg anchored at the south end of Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, a hundred yards away.
In the 1970s Daufuskie Island was part of the past with more ox carts than automobiles. Of the 85 inhabitants, eleven were white. Electric had arrived and they awaited phones. A best selling book, The Water is Wide about Daufuskie using factitious names was published; it cast negativity, bringing national attention. Do-gooders and activists picked up on the publicity. The big obstacle was access with no bridges or ferry service. For those persistent enough to arrive from Savannah, Georgia, fifteen miles away, the Island had no facilities or accommodations. You better bring your own gasoline.
The third time Shorty screamed at the top of her lungs, “get your gun, John,” I could detect a panicky urgency in her voice.
I had no idea what Shorty could have confronted to provoke such a passionate scream. I grabbed my shot gun, Jane got me some shells, and I made a hasty trip to shore in our dinghy.
When I approached their little cabin at Papy’s Landing, Shorty was pointing to the little screened porch and exclaiming that a huge snake had just crawled underneath.
I ducked down with my gun loaded to confront a rattlesnake about three feet long coiled and more or less standing its ground. A stick would have dispatched the critter but Shorty was excited and insisted that I blow that serpent out of existence. I did as she wished. A blast at close range with a 12-gauge shotgun converted the snake to bloody mush.
It took time to calm Shorty, and then I wondered how she could possibly live on an island that was literally slithering with snakes.
The week before Jane had helped Shorty’s sister in-law, Billie Burn, clean a 6 foot 4 inch rattlesnake that Billie had killed with a stick while she was making her rounds driving the school bus. I was very impressed with Billie’s guts to pursue a snake that size with only a stick and actually run it down in the woods and dispatch it. When I arrived at the Burn home, I was amazed that this snake coiled into a bushel basket filled it to overflowing. That trophy was skinned, fastened to a board and prominently displayed in her home. That wasn’t the largest snakeskin hanging on the wall.
Another Daufuskie snake story: One day Jane and I were rowing near Bloody Point on the southeast end of Daufuskie Island when we encountered a relatively large rattlesnake. This one was in the salty seawater and swimming. It took a notion to board our little dinghy and I have never seen Jane row as fast as she did that particular day. I had heard stories of shrimp boats getting rattlesnakes in their nets offshore but this was the first and only time I had ever seen one in the briny sea waters. We were definitely believers now!
I liked what one of the colorful old Daufuskie locals, Hinson White, used to say about snakes on the island. In a broken Gullah accent, he said, “John, when you go a walking in the woods, you are forever tripping over sticks until you spot a big snake. Then you can’t find a stick to save your life.”
Copyright © 2011 John. M. Grimsrud
All rights reserved.
John is the author of the Sailing the Sea Islands: Travels of Dursmirg, and Yucatán’s Magic series.
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