Copperhead Revenge: A Backyard Snake Showdown

A true story from life at Laughing Pelican Outpost

Derek the snake wrangler (Image generated by ChatGPT)

This is a lightly edited version of a story my husband Derek wrote a few years ago after a particularly surreal night rounding up copperheads.

---

After being startled awake much too early by the alarm on our newly installed septic system, I wanted to put the darned thing on mute for the night. Instead, what I got was a battle with slithering demons.

On the way down to the septic tank, I spotted a small copperhead. It lacked the green tail of a baby, but was still pretty small.

I said, “Hello there. You just stay put while I go get the snake tongs.” And he did.

We had ourselves a bit of a bar fight. He ran and struck at me, but missed. Frustrated by his poor aim, he ran some more. I yelled obscenities in his general direction, something to do with his mother.

Well, I won. But unbeknownst to me, he had SnakeChat on his cell phone.

After tossing his lifeless body over the fence to be food for crows, I started back toward the septic tank.

Not five feet from where I saw the tech-savvy little bastard, another materialized out of the grass like a glitch in the Matrix. It could have been his twin—déjà vu with fangs.

As I contemplated how to approach this wingman snake, I saw movement three feet behind him. This one was much larger and less intimidated by me. Then I saw why—he had a twin as well, just two feet to his right.

There I was, outnumbered and outgunned, but still on a bar-fight high. So I looked ’em all right in the eye and, in my best Doc Holliday impression, said, “I’m your huckleberry.”

I went for the little one first and got him on the first try with the snake tongs, but then the two bigger ones started moving in.

Shit! I didn’t have the spade.

So I beat this one to death on a rock, just in time to intercept the first biggun. He dodged and weaved like Muhammad Ali.

I finally got him in the tongs and started toward the rock again, but there was some grass in the tongs. He slid out and slithered right toward my feet.

He yelled, “DANCE you S.O.B.!”

And I did. I danced like no one was watching.

I must have impressed him, because he stopped for a second—and then I struck. He wasn’t getting away this time. That rock got another notch.

But now the fourth one had gone incognito. He could have been anywhere. I was standing in the middle of the yard with two dead comrades of his dangling from the snake tongs, and he was stalking me.

A chilling thought hit me: maybe he had SnakeChat, too. I needed backup.

I carefully picked my way up the slope to the deck, called the wife out, and handed her the flashlight and the spade.

“Step where I step. Do not step where you have not first looked. Got it?”

She nodded, eyes wide as the barrel of a shotgun at close range.

“Good. We are Charlie Mike.” (I know—I’m mixing military movies and Westerns. But this is my movie, so deal with it).

The wife ran the spotlight and held the big equalizer. I ran the recon gear. It took a few tense minutes as I searched here and there.

About the time I thought he’d gotten away—BAM! There he was, staring at us in the grass, whispering into a tiny earpiece, “Commence Operation Fangstrike.”

Well, it ended poorly for him, because now he was the one outnumbered and outgunned.

I bet he’d been live-streaming the whole thing.

As I walked back up to dispose of three more copperheads, a song started running through my brain. Forget Steve Earle and Copperhead Road. What we had was full-on Copperhead Revenge. And I was the one laying down the beat.

---

© 2025 Krista Schumacher

📖 Love this piece but not up for a paid sub? Books fuel my writing. Buy one for me here.