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Pastimes : The new NFL
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To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (89179)12/13/2025 1:47:59 AM
From: Broken_Clock  Read Replies (1) of 89231
 
My story is quite insane. It literally ended up with life and death incidents.

One example:

Behind the Ranger compound we had a water tank on a hill. Every spring we had to clear the waste high grass before the Western rattlers came out of hibernation. This is a year after my room mate was struck by one at B-day party by Lake Cachuma. A 6 footer(those are very big and thick in real life). It was sleeping in the sun, woke up and struck him from more than 6 feet away. Got him in his vein in his ankle. He started to take a step and keeled over into a coma. His heart pumped that venom straight up to his heart and Bam! Took him 45 minutes to die. Excruciating pain.

So I had developed a rather extreme caution after that. My ranger boss was a complete asshole. We kept telling him we needed to cut down the grass. He waited till July heat then told me to take our heavy duty commercial walk behind and mow the hillside. The other two rangers and me went ballistic on him because we knew that hillside was now full of rattlers. He finally threatened to suspend me if I didn't do it. I had my snake boots on but knew that was no real protection. So I fired up the mower and drove it up to the edge of the gravel where the tall dry grass started. I made it about 3 feet into the grass when I saw that fat black rattler fly at me...at least a 5 footer and really fat. I was so keyed up by then that the adrenaline only took about 1/100th of a second and I flew straight up in the air and landed about 10 ft back in the gravel parking area. I think my vertical was at least 4 or 5 ft. The mower just sat there running until one of the other rangers finally worked up the nerve to pull it by the handle out the grass. My uncle almost died rock climbing in California when he reached up to grab a handhold and a rattler hit him in the hand. His partners carried him down and off to the hospital where he almost died.

One good thing about Hawaii: no SNAKES!

Being attacked by a big rattler will give you a different perspective on life. The one that went after me was the black variety. Very hard to see in the tall grass.



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