This is my post for #freewriters 2652 prompt *survival of the richest * hosted by @mariannewest
Yesterday our granddaughter's dog started barking at something. The tone of her bark sent my husband outside and for me to come running from across the yard toward her. My husband was the first there. He is yelling at me to get the dogs. I ask what is it and he keeps saying get the dogs in the house. I say rattler and he says yes now go.
I come out of the house with the shotgun, but he does not want it. He wants a four foot pipe and a piece of rope and for me to hurry and find it for him. I come back with the pipe and rope. Now he wants me to run the rope through the pipe to make a loop out one end, my hands were shaking so much that it was hard to do.
I asked why he did not shoot it and he told me it was too little for him to eat. He does not like to kill anything unless he can eat it. In his book, rattlesnakes are not the survival of the richest or thickest, it is the survival of the thinnest, that they get set free. This makes number 11 for the rattlesnakes we have seen since living here, it makes 2 that this dog has found, she is smart enough to know her distance from them.
this was the other one the dog found
9 were over 5 feet, he ate them, one the other dog killed it was about 15 inches long and this one was about 3 feet.
He dropped it into a garbage can and carried it out on the preserve and released it. I followed behind him and got scared every time he told it, oh no you don't, or get back down there. I told him it is not a child or one of the dogs, all it wants to do is bite you, he says, yep it's trying. We went to what he thought was far enough from the house and he dumped it out of the garbage can. To tell you how pissed it was, it did not run off, it coiled up and started rattling its tail at us. We left it alone so it could calm down and go back to its rattlesnake life.
After we got back to the house we let the dogs out and my husband called the one who found the snake over to where it was. She did not want to go near the area and he did not force her. He told her she was a good girl for staying away from it, she knows they are bad and she did good.
This is where it was at, last week I weeded this area.
photos are mine