Don't Sit Under That Hickory Tree!

Don't sit under that hickory tree !!!!

By Chris Harper

One sunny afternoon back in the late eighties, I was mowing my soon to be mother-in-law's back yard, brownie points being a necessary form of revenue at the time. Located in rural northeast Georgia, the lawn was lush and overgrown to say the least. The fifty year old barbed wire fence that separated the yard from a very curious herd of bovine was thickly covered in trumpet vine and honey suckle. The land sloped down to a creek that was about fifty yards behind the property line. The vegetation was seemingly impenetrable there but was an often used travel way of the local deer population. Scattered around the 4 acre yard were 8 - 10 birdhouses, at the time in use by up to 6 different species. It was my own personal Garden of Eden - literally.

Many stories about the "nests of moccasins" found in the area were related to me by my future "kin folk". Why one winter when cousin Al went under the house to work on the plumbing, he was chased out by hordes of angry moccasins ! "Do tell !", I would shout wide-eyed as the tales were recounted.

Back to the lawn. It was a warm day in the late spring as I recall, I had mown most of the 4 acre lawn with a self propelled mower ( I propelled it myself ) and was working my way back to the corner nearest the creek. There was a shady grove of trees there and it was a place I enjoyed being. At the base of one of the hickory trees was a patch of honeysuckle about 3 feet across. I thought about it for a moment and decided that it really made the area look too unkempt and that there was enough honeysuckle for the birds and bees on the fence line anyway. I lowered the mower down onto the doomed vine ever-so-slowly so as not to bog down the little Briggs & Stratton engine. Since the grass hadn't been cut in quite some time, I had set the mower to cut on it's highest setting. After I had cut the little patch of honeysuckle, naturally I stepped right onto the spot with that odd sense of self satisfaction about how neat the yard was now going to look. And with my thoughts wandering on how I would be praised for a job well done, I suddenly became aware of a rhythmic thumping sensation on the inside of my right ankle.

Now my first thought was that a vine had become wrapped around the mower's blade and was slapping my leg with each revolution. But I realized that the rotations per second seemed a little slow for a 5 horse lawn mower. Glancing down, I discovered that I was standing smack dab in the middle of a rather well-fed, seriously unhappy, 3+ foot southern copperhead. And to my utter dismay, it was repeatedly striking my leg! Fortunately for me, only about a foot of the north end of the incensed serpent was available to do combat. In a millionth of a second, I found myself being propelled skyward by some primitive, neanderthal-like reaction that probably originated somewhere in my spinal cord. About 4 feet skyward according to my wife. (You know, the kind of jump where you pull your legs up in the fetal position? Well, anyway....)

Also, according to my wife, there was the sound of a woman screaming coming from my general direction, although I do not recall anyone else being near me at the time. Fortunately, L.L. Bean was in style at the University of Georgia that year and I happened to have on my 8 inch high leather duck boots. So the only thing injured in the honeysuckle incident was my pride.

Later on, after this incident, I was told that my mother-in-law had been bitten years before on her right buttock by a copperhead when she sat down on a tuft of grass at the base of the tree. Of course at the time, the cut and suck method was the only available treatment, since tourniquets don't fit most butt cheeks. The family, with this knowledge in mind, transported her rapidly to the nearest hospital where thankfully, she recovered. ( Shhhhh, she may read this ! ) ~CH

The author is a paramedic and currently teaches classes on snakebite to EMS personnel.

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