I don’t know what he expected. Seriously, how the hell was I supposed to sleep at night knowing he was collecting rattlesnakes in a pit he dug near my bedroom window??? He already had a big one in there and was gloating over getting more and of course he told me how he’d throw me in with them when he was done, just to torture me.

My little eight year old brain hadn’t figured out that he was often full of shit yet, so I believed him. And I was scared.

Man was he pissed at me for telling. I still remember our mom beating that big ole snake to death against a tree with one of our dad’s golf clubs. I’d happily visit its mangled corpse at the edge of the grass every day after school until it mostly turned to dust and blew away.

Seeing that dead rattlesnake is one of my happier childhood memories.