Welcome to the life and times of everyone's favorite Phoenixian!

I just woke up and was looking out my truck window when I saw it headed toward the front of the back tire near my door, rattling it's sinister rattle, all the while. I freaked! My dogs were under there. They always sleep under there. I had to react fast so I started yelling to my dogs. I needed to get out of my truck but the snake was coiled just under my door so I would have to climb out the window and onto the truck. Before I could get up, my dogs awoke and came around to my door, in a circular arc, staring at the snake. I kept screaming for them to get back and away from the snake and into the camper shell. Thorne wanted to get closer to it and I screamed and him like I'd never screamed at my dogs. They knew this thing was dangerous and stayed away. They were very obedient at that point.

I climbed out the window remembering that rattlers can strike the full distance of it's own body and although this one didn't seem overly huge it could still reach my leg as I climbed out of my truck and up onto the hood. I walked to the roof of my truck and my dogs had gone around to the right side of my truck and Ander was about to crawl under to where the rattlesnake was and I screamed at him to stay back and I called both of them to follow me as I walked to the end of the truck and into the camper. They both followed obediently and did not fight and I latched each of them inside the camper, closed it up and walked back up the back of my truck and to my window and on into it.

I was gonna run this thing over. This was a great camping spot and I wasn't about to lose it over a stupid poisonous snake. It was just under to back left tire and I turned my truck on quickly and sped forward. Then I sped backwards and forward again and back, crushing a water bowl that had been under the right tire. I could hear the rattler but he was now in the cacti to the right of the truck.

I drove around the loop of the campsite and faced the area my truck was at and saw no guts or any sign of damaged rattlesnake anywhere. This bummed me out. The little fucker got out from under my truck at lightning speed, I suppose.

I found a few rocks within safe distance from the snake and threw them at the snake from atop my hood. I saw it ease forward and stare at me, smiling a forked-tongue smile that only a rattlesnake could. He was unharmed. I hadn't done anything. I yelled at it saying that he knew I had to do what I had to do (kill him) to protect my wolves and myself and then at the top of my lungs I yelled at him to stay away from my dogs. He just rattled away some rant about misinformation on the internet throughout the centuries concerning rattlesnakes and that my actions would truly be unjust and possibly send me to Tartarus deep within Aedes and not the Hesperides, that golden island where I had planned to spend eternity.

I snapped back: "The internet has only been around since the 1800s!, you dolt! When Al Gore and Xenu (of Scientology fame) combined forces to invent it, you fuck! I'm not stupid, stupid rattlesnake!"

He wasn't listening and he eased his whole body within my view so I could see more undamage that had not been done to his body. (If you could call it a body)

I found more rocks, all the while listening for any change in where the rattle sound might be going. He stayed stagnant, probably coiling himself into such a tight coil that he could possibly fly into the air at me and bite me just about anywhere on this body of mine.

I hopped back up onto my truck and threw more rocks, totally hitting cactus and dirt and branches nowhere near my target, some of them ten feet away. I remembered I am left handed when it comes to throwing, but I could not find any more rocks that would hurt this crafty creeping creature of chthon. The rattling started to dissipate and I moved or coughed and it would motor up again at full thrust.

I decided I would just pack up camp as I was out of ideas and out of energy. When all was done I never heard the rattle sound again. I grabbed a few more rocks, the tiny ones that were left, threw them at the cactus he had been under and heard nothing. I climbed back in my window and we left.

I think it might have climbed inside my engine and it's going to slither into my cab from the holes where the peddles are.

Sometimes I can still hear a faint rattling. This is my nightmare.

All in all, I thank the gods my dogs were not recalcitrant. It would have been their end, had they been.

The Moral to this Story?: Screaming beyond mortal capability causes animals to obey you. Probably out of fear.

...and...

...recalcitrant is the true opposite of the word obedient.