Grandpa Kader and the Black Snake

Grandpa Kader and the Black Snake

Down home we have to fence in all of our barnyard fowls to keep out foxes, opossum and other varmints. When I say fence in, I mean we even have to put chicken wire over the top of the hen house and the entire chicken yard. Even then we lose chickens and eggs on a regular basis. I can remember one hot dusty day when Bo Beasley and I had been out splitting the rows in the cotton patch and were bringing the mules back to the barn, along about sundown. We saw some activity over by the chicken coop and after we finished watering and feeding the mules we hot-footed it over there to see what was happening. (We took care of the mules first, cause if you didn't, Grandpa Kader would get awful unhappy). When we got there, we saw a 6-foot long Black Snake. We called them "black runners" cause they could go so fast. That snake had a big lump in his middle and was trying to break it. He couldn't get out of the chicken pen cause the lump was too big and wouldn't fit through the chicken wire. And as we watched, he wrapped himself around a cypress post and tried to squeeze the lump and then went on top of the chicken house and flew off and hit the ground with a thump, trying to break that lump. Well Grandma Estelle would not have any snakes in her chicken coop, so Bo and I killed the snake and Grandpa Kader cut him open to see what was making the lump. Black snakes dearly love to eat chicken eggs and they swallow them whole and then constrict their bodies to crush the egg. Grandma Estelle, had a few 'settin hens' and to help motivate them to lay eggs, she would put ceramic eggs under the hens to get them to laying. That dern Black snake had swallowed one of the ceramic eggs by mistake.