When Northern Girls Meet Florida Man
I was a student living in the Tampa area. I had a 1 BR on the same street as the brewery entrance to Busch Gardens in the early ‘80s. I pretty much knew everything—I had it ALL figured out as far as God, government and drivin’ through the mud and sand.
Back then empty lots and undeveloped parcels still existed around the Tampa area. There was a gas station/cheap beer store across from the north entrance to the apartments where I lived. There was a soft trail that was a short-cut into the neighborhood.
People, especially women (not a dig, just a fact), would get stuck in the sugar sand. In an honest effort to be a good Samaritan, I would offer to help them out.
These were city people from up north who had no experience driving in the Florida sand for the most part. Yankee accents was the tell. Most of the time I could drive their car out for them. Occasionally, I would have to pull them out with my F-100 with a three on the tree and no A/C. It didn’t even come with an AM radio.
To show their appreciation, they would usually give me $20 or something for saving them the hassle of calling/waiting for a tow truck. That’s when $5 would buy a loaf of bread, bag of chips, sodas AND peanut butter.
Someone at the brewery ran a loading dock sale on the weekends selling loose beers that fell out of six packs, damaged cans, label fails and whatnot—$1 for a mismatched case of cans and bottles of varying quality (Bud, Busch, Natural Light and sometimes Michelob).
The girls who lived across from me were from New Jersey or Boston—whichever northern dialect it was. They were the first openly gay couple I’d met. They would come in late at night with a buzz and put on a show one way or the other.
They would sometimes fight about typical jealous couple stuff like one accusing the other of flirting with the sales clerk at the store. It would usually end up with makeup sex on the couch which was placed in front of the sliding glass doors to the balcony. They seldom, if ever, shut their curtains. I'm convinced they were the types that liked to be watched.
They didn’t know I existed until the evening I came home with a six and a half to seven feet long rattlesnake for supper. It was a beautiful creature. I caught it on a fishing lure of all things.
I didn’t have a boat so I found places along the shore to fish. While shoving through some saw palmetto, I came across this Eastern Diamondback. It was backed up against the roots and was shaking that rattle vigorously.
I froze in my tracks. I quickly analyzed the situation and determined that my only way out was to distract it long enough for me to get out of striking distance. I had a Rapala minnow lure tied on my Ugly Stik with a Daiwa bait-casting reel. The lure had a hollow chamber that produced a “rattle” as it was worked through the water.
My only play was to whack the snake in the head and jump back. I slowly lowered the pole and lure down right beside the snake’s head to get a bead on it.
Just as I was about to draw back to take a swing, the lure jiggled and rattled. The snake bit the lure and I instinctively jerked back on the pole which set the hooks in the surprised snake’s mouth.
The snake immediately curled its body around its head. My Ugly Stik wasn’t designed to lift a large reptile coiled around the skinny end. I had to pick the snake up by its body and carry it back to my truck hoping it was unable to free its head.
I placed the snake down on the tailgate pondering my next move. Chopping its head off seemed to be the only logical way to proceed. I got my hatchet out and began uncoiling the snake which was no easy task as it was resisting my efforts.
I finally got to where I could see it was thoroughly impaled, top and bottom of the jaw, on the treble hook. I stretched out just enough of its body using my foot to hold him down while I took several whacks with the hatchet to separate the head from the body.
I carefully skinned it being careful not to rupture the innards. I decided to cook it on the grill with bbq sauce as that was about the extent of my culinary skill at the time.
My Yankee lesbian neighbors picked this evening to satisfy their curiosity about the friendly beardy guy who caught his own fish and ATE them. I was way more strange to them than they were to me.
They were big city girls that didn’t know which food came from which critter or plant. They told me that I scared them for some reason. I invited them to try some of my dinner which included pork and beans with bbq sauce mixed in.
I didn’t tell them what we were eating. They assumed it was fish, I reckon. Everything was going along fine. They helped themselves to a second portion of bbq snake and beans.
After dinner I rolled us a fatty. We grabbed our cocktails and adjourned to my balcony for some fresh air and a toke. One of the girls finally noticed the snakeskin hanging off my balcony like a towel hung across the rail to dry. She asked what it was and I told them the story of how a rattlesnake came to be hanging on my balcony and the subsequent dinner.
The second they realized they had eaten a snake, their expressions changed. They had never eaten wild-caught food, only store-bought food. They tried to not let it bother them, I pointed out that I ate it too. No—we’re not going to be poisoned by rattlesnake venom.
I tried to explain that venom is usually injected by showing them the needle-like fangs in the head that was still attached to the lure. That was it—they both turned white as a sheet and hurriedly excused themselves.
They threw up in the common area between their place and mine. Guess they didn’t like the idea of a snake being inside them. ☮️❤️😊🎶🖖
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