Fessie and snakes

Other than a bad thunderstorm with lightning, due to his being in a typhoon on a battleship in the Pacific during World War II, I don't know what Fessie was scared of. It certainly wasn't snakes. He had a healthy respect for poisonous snakes, but he wasn't scared of them. I can remember a particular time when he was playing with a chicken snake, just irritating the fool out of that snake, and the snake was absolutely furious with Fessie and kept lunging at him. I was watching from a safe distance and was terrified. My fear of snakes came naturally, from my father who was scared of snakes. Fessie got a big kick out of his son-in-law's fear of snakes. You can just imagine the ribbing my father took from Fessie.

You've seen lots of pictures of Fessie with fish, dogs and deer - now here's a couple of pictures of Fessie with snakes. The rattlesnake in the second picture is, of course, dead. The rattlers were always cut off of the dead rattlesnakes and kept in a drawer in the dining room buffet table. Scary but fascinating items to the grandchildren.

Once, Fessie came in from a morning of working in the fields, carrying a sack of peaches. He handed the sack to Beck who was thrilled to get them, envisioning a peach cobbler for dessert for that evening's supper. She was not amused when she opened the sack of peaches to find an angry chicken snake! I imagine that Fessie didn't get any supper that night!