Stories From Under The Sky

Snake Liars

snake liars OFALL the unvarnished liars in this world, the snake liar is the worst. It's pretty hard to beat a fishing liar or a grizzly-hunting liar, unless you ring in a long-range-duckshooting liar. But all of them have to go some to beat a good snake liar. I'd always thought I'd heard some fancy snake liars in my time, but I met one awhile back in the Louisiana bayou country who shaded them all. We were just talking about fishing and getting along all right when this gent gave me a slaunchwise look and started in to lie. "Mister," he says. "You know anything about snakes?" "A little." "Well, a little won't git it," he says. "Now you set, and I'm gonna tell you about snakes." He sure did. That man sat there and ripped into some of the most shameless snake stories you ever heard. He wasn't just fibbing, either, like we all do when we talk fishing. He was flat-out lying} this man was. He said he'd been struck as a boy by a cottonmouth that weighed fifty pounds. Coiled, that snake was bigger than a bushel basket. When it struck, it tore away the left half of my host's face, but the healing qualities of an absinthe and crayfish bisque diet were such that this didn't even leave a scar. I69 From there we went to "stumptails" - some sort of varmint that's only ten inches long but has a fist-sized head and a body as thick as a stevedore's forearm. Then we got around to rattlesnakes. "Biggest rattler I ever seen in these parts," he said, watching me for any flicker of disbelief, "was killed 'way back in the cane when I was a tad. Big around as a jointed stovepipe, that snake was, and fourteen foot long by actual measure and with thutty-two rattles by actual count." He paused to let me chew on that. "We never did find out how much that sarpint weighed, but my daddy hitched a horse to it and drug it out of the cane like a lawg. Just like a great big 01' pi'zen lawgl" The clincher was one about a snake that could coil on the surface of a bayou as if it were dry land, and strike at passing boats. "I've had a hunnerd of them strike my pirogue," my host said, "and sometimes the cypress swole around the place that was snake-bitl" Now, this man was sincere and didn't mean any mischief. Snake liars just can't help themselves; there's something about snakes that obliges them to lie. And so we have Snake Stories - rich stews of outdoor fancy that are sparingly seasoned with facts and brought to their full flavor by years of telling. We could probably do without snake liars, but things wouldn't be the same. Take the fire-breathing dragons of the fairy tales, for instance. Thought up by old-time snake liars, every one of theml When you look at it that way, it makes a difference, for what would childhood be without dragons? It wouldn't surprise me if the snake liars of today are the Brothers Grimm of tomorrow, and maybe the. Story of the Slithery Stumptail will fascinate children long after they've become bored with space travel and lunar playgrounds. ...