My precious baby bloodhound, Jake, and I were just returning from our evening walk when I spied this copperhead lounging on the porch. Fortunately, I noticed my wife was in the kitchen so I hollered to her to come out and get the dog so I could dispatch the snake. After some coaxing for Leah to walk around the copperhead and take Jake's lead, I went over to the woodpile, selected a good head basher and then came back to take care of business. By this time, though, the snake was figuring out that something was up and proceeded to crawl off the porch and into an old doghouse we have next to the porch. Obviously, I was not going to reach into the doghouse for some close combat so it was time to go to Plan B.
It was pretty dark by then and I knew I needed to use something that would give me the best chance of killing the snake quickly yet not tear up the doghouse too badly. The little 10 watt bulb went on over my head and I said to myself, "I know, I'll use my flintlock pistol." So I ran into the house, put a light shot load in the pistol, grabbed a flashlight, and came back out. Again, I had to coax Leah to step close to the doghouse and shine the flashlight into it. The copperhead was holding his head up just perfectly as I cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger. Flintlock - 1, snake - 0!
As a general rule, snakes around the house get a pass from me but when I have to start kicking the venomous ones out of the way just to get to the door, I have to say that enough is enough.
It was a pretty good size one; about 2 1/2 feet long.
Fortunately, my puppy wasn't too traumatized over the whole ordeal.
Darren
Topic: Flintlocks and copperheads (Read 1349 times)