What to do in the event of a strike
By Sarah Haak
One afternoon I come home from a walk to see Anne standing outside on the stone terrace, a long stick to the ground in front of her, relief on her face when she sees me. Oh Sarah, I’m so glad you’re here, she says. Something in her voice makes me run.
Closer, I see she holds a pitchfork buried in the body of an enormous rattlesnake writhing incomprehensibly down four wooden steps as its tail draws fast and meaningless symbols in the dirt. The snake is tacked to the decking near the base of its skull, right under its telltale diamond-shaped head, and blood wells up to surround the tine.
She hands me the pitchfork and heads towards the garage. I look down and my mind associates every detail I know of rattlesnakes from children’s picture books and half a life spent in the Southwest. Its eyes are hooded, its mouth gasps open full of white fangs. I wonder if it was moving quickly when it was punctured, though unlikely as reptiles are quite slow. But the rattlesnake’s tailshaker muscle moves incredibly fast—when rattling, twice as fast as the wing muscles of a hummingbird.
Anne comes back with a large hoe, the one we use for difficult weeding. She puts all her 82 years into it as she plunges the hoe down and it doesn’t even occur to me to switch places with her. Abruptly I remember a drive with my mother one Texas summer riding with the windows down when we passed a woman standing motionless in her front yard. She was a blip to me, a blur I would have forgotten, but my mother stopped the car sharply and told me to stay inside. This close I could see the woman was older, white-haired, that she had tears running down her face. I watched my mother walk slowly around the woman toward the side of the house and I could hear them speaking in low tones. My mother came back with a shovel she dashed twice against the ground and told me later, That snake had her trapped for over an hour.
Anne and I push the body into a white bucket, careful with the head. Cold-blooded animals die slowly, their lower metabolisms keeping their internal organs alive long after decapitation. I’ve heard of people bitten by rattlesnakes even after the head is severed. Anne lays her hand on my shoulder. I’m sorry you had to help with that, Sarah—I just can’t take the risk with my grandchildren here so often. I know this is true. I’ve seen the children, some only three or four, taking corners around the stone walkway at a run. It would only take an instant. I know this, but I stand quietly long after it is done, horrified as the bucket rustles softly.
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About Sarah Haak
Sarah Haak is an essayist from Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cincinnati, where she studies literary nonfiction writing and composition studies. She holds a master’s degree in creative nonfiction writing from Ohio University. Before taking up writing, she was a chef, a small business owner, and a natural therapeutic specialist with a focus in herbal medicine making. She currently serves as an Assistant Editor for Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, and her work is published in Sonora Review, Essay Daily, Conceptions Southwest, Atticus Review, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, and is forthcoming in Fourth Genre and other journals. Find her at sarahhaak.com