Falling into Fall

The Gentleman Snake 

 The cranes returned recently. I don't know exactly when, but I knew because I could hear them calling to each other across the sky. Sounds travel differently in the cooling air and I can hear further. And the snake didn't rattle. 

 I didn't make it in time to save him. The quail crashed out of the sagebrush where they hide in the late morning and bounced off in a dozen directions at once.

 The blood spray in the dust told me I was too late. The body was curled in the shadow of the tractor. The slow water was passing in the acequia. I stood panting with the metal snake catcher clattering at my side. The cranes were calling. 

 We haven't seen eye-to-eye about the snakes. I have wanted to move them from the property, and he has wanted to them kill on site. I bought the gangly 5-foot-long snake catcher so that we could safely pick the snakes up and put them into a box. I planned to drive them out to the BLM land, and let them go. I bought a snake bite kit. He bought ammunition. He carried the gun when riding his horse and working with the tractor. I didn't make it in time. 

 I gently crouched over the curled body in the shadow of the tractor. 

 It was quick at least. The head completely severed in what I imagine was one, quick, sharp, downward slam of the shovel. 

 My father-in-law was leaning on the tractor, looking at me to see if I was, maybe, going to cry. The snake's open mouth clotted with blood and dust didn't show any sign of fatal fangs. 

 I held the rattle in my hand and counted 11 rattles. They say a rattle is grown each year. The rattle was light, more delicate than the curve of a broken eggshell. I could see through the outer casing to the seed of bone. I shook it, and we both shivered at the sound, the involuntary intended response to the warning sound.

 “So,” I asked him, "Could we at least try to save the rattle? Maybe even the skin?" and his face brightened, and he responded, "Si". 

 We crouched together next to the water, with the cranes calling back and forth across the sky. Exposing the clean white underside of the scale armor, the tender purple-pink flesh translucent as we peeled the scales away. Rows of delicate curved needle bones holding the familiar shape of snake as we removed the parts our eyes know best.

 Today we learned together how to skin a rattlesnake.