Snakes Again-A Very True Story

Or I guess I should say one snake, but one snake might as sell be more when facing it at nine o'clock at night with a machettie that needed sharpening. Beverly was talking with a neighbor after dark and when she returned to our humble abode and told me she saw the head of a snake coming out from under our front steps. She went back out to get a closer look then cam back in again and told me it was a rattle snake. I told her to get me a flash light while I went out the back door to get my machettie, dull or not. It was the only thing I could really think of. I spotted the snake as it wedged itself between the wooden steps and concrete slab. I could not get a good shot or I guess you might say a good angle for a whack but as it began to slither back under the steps I lunged the point of my machettie and stabbed its side. This only made the snake mad and it curled up in a striking position. It startled me and some how I found myself on my back in the middle of the street. A passer by, just out for a night stroll, thought I was drunk and came over to help me up. I showed him the problem and we both watched the snake as it watched us. Bev soon showed up with a shovel from a neighbor, (the neighbor had decided not to come in our hour of need) and with a machettie strike here, and straight edged shovel chop there and a rock crushing blow to the head with, what else, a rock, I dispatched the snake to where ever snakes go when dispatched. It was a small rattle snake, but the smaller the deadlier,about two feet long. This morning I will have to look further under the steps and hope that the stories I here about snakes travelling in pairs is untrue.