A Rattlesnake Story

[This is an excerpt from a transcript of interviews between Emmilou Collins Edmonds Adams and her father, Carlos C. Collins, recorded February 14, 1982. Passages in italics are his actual words, although portions may have been omitted for brevity. Portions in brackets [] were added for clarification.]

Carlos Collins –

I have a rattlesnake story I would like to reveal to you at this time.
 
When we lived in Fisher County and I was about 12 or 13 years old, we milked about 6 or 8 cows. The cows would be out in the pasture during the daytime, and the calves would be in the corral during the day. At night, the cows would come home and we would milk them and we would turn the calves out in the pasture for the night.
 
After the calves got to be pretty good size and were able to do a lot of grazing, they wouldn’t come back to the corral promptly at milking time and sometimes I had to go and round them up.
 
One of these mornings, when they failed to come back to the corral at the barn, I rode my horse out to round them up and one day in the course of my work, I rode by a prairie dog hole and I saw a rattlesnake and when I came up close and was going to kill it, it went down in the prairie dog hole. And knowing the habits of a rattlesnake, I got me a pole and commenced poking some dirt down in the hole. The rattlesnake came up to where I could see him a little and I kept jabbing at him and finally I jabbed the snake and crippled it. It continued, though, to rattle and but finally position [sic] where I could kill the snake.
 
I had it outside and the first thing I knew a little small rattler about a foot long came out of the hole – a little fellow looking around and acting like he wanted to fight. And I killed that one and here came another one and I killed it. Then I messed around and here was another one and finally they came out thick and fast. Finally, I counted up my little rattlers and my big rattler and there were twenty-five rattlers that I killed before breakfast one morning.
 
So that’s the biggest rattlesnake store I have to tell. But it’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me.