Some of you may know that I have a brother. There was a time I referred to him as my little brother. But something happened, and now he is bigger than I am. I now refer to him as my younger brother. In fact, he is about seven years younger than I am. He has been that way his entire life.
He and I have spent a lot of hours fishing together. At one point, we stepped up our game and bought a john-boat. One thing I learned was if you buy a boat out on the land, you really have no idea how it will do in the water. I guess I should have figured it out when the guy selling us the boat made a point of reminding us that it was being sold “as is.”
The “as is” meant it had a hole in it that we discovered the first time we put it in the water. It wasn’t a big hole. But it was big enough that we would take on water fairly quickly which meant we would have to go to the shore, unload everything that was floating around in the boat, dump all the water out, reload everything that we had in the boat, shove off into the pond and start the whole cycle over again.
One day my brother and I were in the boat fishing quickly because you wanted to get as much done as possible before you had to go to the shore when it happened. My brother said, “Look at that snake!”
I did. It looked a lot like an anaconda or a python—or a coppermouthrattlemocassin.
The snake was acting rather nonchalant, which I have noticed is a trick snakes often do. I did not want to take chances with a potentially tricky snake. I’ll just go ahead and admit it. I am terrified of snakes. If I had been in the Garden of Eden with Eve and Adam and could have found a 10-foot pole, there wouldn’t have been any sinning because there wouldn’t have been a snake left. Well, if bad words are sinning, I might have sinned some but just a little bit. Snakes seem to bring that out in me.
The next thing I heard as I was trying to navigate to the shore so I could run to and climb up on my pickup was my brother saying, “I think I can snag that sucker with this spinner bait.” I remember begging my brother not to try that. When he laughed manically, I started ordering him not to try to snag the snake. Trying to order people around, especially younger siblings, is a common trait of the oldest sibling. It seldom works.
I watched in horror as my brother cast his lure over the snake, took three or four cranks on his reel and then set hook. My brother snagged that snake right in the middle of its demonic body.
The snake was not appreciative. It started rolling around in the water like the Tasmanian Devil, wrapping my brother’s fishing line around its evil body. And then it started toward us.
I put the trolling motor on high and started toward the shore. But I have to tell you that the boat half-full of water, carrying two grown men and too much fishing gear was not moving very fast. And that stupid snake was gaining on us.
I kept telling my brother to throw his fishing pole in the pond, and I would buy him another one. He didn’t believe me. And then the snake made a move toward the front of the boat in what was certainly an attempt to cut us off. By God’s grace, I grabbed a knife out of my tackle box and cut the fishing line. The last thing I remember was watching this dumb snake swim away with a spinner bait stuck in its back and trailing some monofilament line. At least he was swimming away from us. My brother said something about that being a $3 spinner bait.
I wanted to tell him that I was worth more than a $3 spinner bait, but I was still trying to stop hyperventilating.
I learned a few things from this near-death experience. One, don’t buy a boat with a hole in it. No good will come from that. Two, be careful who you fish with. Just because you are related doesn’t guarantee intelligence. Three, be careful what you snag. Sometimes they snag back. Four, stay away from snakes. That little grin they have will scare the bejeebers out of you.
