RATTLESNAKE!!!

Ok, so this is a not-so-beautiful side of life, but it sure is old fashioned.  I was posting about something else, but got interrupted by yells of "Get the shotgun, there's a rattlesnake!" from several sibling.  I rush to the closet, pull out my lovely 16 ga. side-by-side, run out the door while slipping a couple shells in breech, run to the pile of rock where it supposedly went.  I have the butt of the gun pressed to my shoulder, ready to shoot any second.  I can't see anything as it is getting dark, so I pause for a second and listen.  A rustle in the leaves, I'm straining my eyes, I see movement.  Quickly, aim and shoot.  I know I hit because the thin form jerks; I fire the second cartridge, it jerks again.  Darn! I forgot more shells!  Siblings come running with more, and I replace the spent ones with shaking fingers.  Now where did that rattler go?  There it is in the blackberry bushes!  I fire both cartridges.  As I pull the shells out, suddenly I realize that one of them was a 20 ga. shell.  Ooops!  Thank God that nothing bad happened, except for having to use my brother's pocket knife to pry it out.  (Sidenote: the larger the gauge number, the smaller the size.  So 20 ga. is smaller than 16, and 10 ga. is practically a cannon, well close to it!)  That crazy snake is STILL moving so I fire one last shot (Yikes, that was FIVE of them!  Ok, I promise, it was not my shooting abilities, I really am a good shot! Usually.....)  Finally, it is still.  Mom pulls the now mangled body from the bushes with a hoe.  I see now why it didn't die quickly.  Although the tail is blown off and it's been hit all over the body, somehow I never hit its head.  With the bad lighting and all the bushes, I just couldn't see its head clearly and had to guess.  After a few minutes of searching, we find the tail and the rattle.  Then as we're standing there, the nerve reflexes cause the very-much-dead snake and its disconnected tail to start twitching. Ewww!  That I cannot stand, so I run screaming into the house, sit down and write this.  The end.  (P.S. This is a completely true story with no exaggeration what-so-ever.)

The rattle