The Half That Bites - 1981
By David Marks

In 1981 my Petty Ray crew was moved down to Marianna Florida from Dothan Alabama.  We were working the Apalachicola Forest area in chest deep water when to my relief, we were pulled off to do a small side job west of Donalsonville Georgia in the Chattahoochee river bottoms.  It was tree farm country and hot, but at least we didn’t smell like swamp mud at day’s end.  And there were plenty of snakes down there.

After having worked the south on a powder crew for a year and a half, I thought I knew what there was to know about water moccasins.  I was wrong.

Bruce Overstreet was line up man.  Festus Estes and Terry Flywheel were cutting with him.  Perry Pickard was on the rod and I was in back trying to get a turn point.  Perry came back to the instrument and said they had to stop because there was a snake.

“Waddaya mean?” I asked.  Hell, there’s been hundreds of them on line.  In the past the boys just sliced them up and we moved on.  Perry said this time it was different.

I got hot and walked up to the front of the line.  Bruce told me, “Stay back, he’s a big’un.”  I was short on patience and asked for the machete, and Bruce obliged, still warning me.  And there he was.  Yep.  He was pretty big for a moccasin, maybe four feet long and fat.  And he wasn’t budging.

So trying to show bravado, I walked slowly up, judged its movement and head sway, and whack!  I cut the bastard in half right quick.  I turned around and grinned with one of those ‘I’m a bad boy too’ smirks.

That’s when Bruce grabbed me and yanked me nearly off me feet and backwards a ways.  The half with the head came after me and nearly got my leg!  I learned a valuable lesson that day.  Those cottonmouths never quit until the last beat of their heart has done thumped.  That was close!