(This is part of the Growing Up In Utah's Dixie series, by LaVarr B. Webb)

 

We had many other kinds of snakes on the ranch. The

most spectacular were the black and white king snakes.

Their colors, those alternating bands of creamy white and

jet black, were beautiful. Although harmless to humans,

they were sure death to mice, pack rats, and birds.

 

Our garden, on the ranch, was in a field a half mile or

so above the house. One day I was walking up to it, and I

heard a bird, western chat, very noisily screaming and chat-

tering. I made my way through some willows and other

shrubs to where the bird was sounding off, and found a

king snake wrapped around a limb of a small tree, with his

head in a birds nest, the chat's nest.

 

The chat was diving on the snake, beating at it with

its wings and pecking with its beak, but the snake ignored

it. The king snake saw me or felt my presence. It immediately

put its body in reverse, and before I could act, flowed

down the limb to the ground, and lost itself in the under-

brush.

 

I looked into the nest, which had contained four birds,

and found one lonely baby chat. The snake had devoured

the rest, and would have eaten the last one if I hadn't

happened along. I debated what to do. I knew the snake

would come back to the nest. I thought of trying to move

it to a taller tree, but I didn't know whether the parents

would abandon it if I handled it in the moving process. Then,

also, I didn't know how to secure the nest. I couldn't just

set it in the crotch of a tree, because, unsecured, a gust of

wind would have sent it to the ground.

 

Finally, I decided to leave it alone, and let nature run

its course. I left the chattering parent and the young bird

with the hope that the king snake would forget the

location of the nest and the little chat that cowered there.

However, that hope was in vain, because when I returned

the next day, the nest was empty.

 

Nature is cruel, not just because several young chats

were killed, but because in this life there are the predators

and the prey the predators living at the expense of the

prey, and those chats had so much potential. The chat is

almost as versatile as the mocking bird. His notes and it's

songs are many and varied, ranging from trills to outright

chattering or scolding.

 

I felt that through their death, the earth was diminished.

Moreover, the parents moved away from the gar-

den, and I missed them very much, but the bird's death

benefited the snake. It was sustained by the meal the

young chats furnished, and I am sure, by curbing the

proliferation of mice, rats, and rattlesnakes (king

snakes kill and eat rattlesnakes). They do more good

than harm. Yet, in the battle for survival, I would prefer

that the chats and other birds would be successful. After

all, a king snake can't sing, and there are very few of

we humans who don't get a creepy crawly feeling when

in the presence of a snake.

 

I worked for a man named Van Zyverden in Crescent,

in the southeast corner of Salt Lake Valley, during the early

1950s. He was from Holland, and was trying to start a

tulip farm. One day, I was following him down a ditch. I

noticed a middle sized blow snake that he had disturbed

when he stepped over it, but he hadn't seen it. I picked it

up, caught up with him, and said, "Her Van, I've got some-

thing for you."

 

He turned, saw the wriggling snake looking him in the

eye, with its forked tongue flashing in and out, and he

screamed, "Good Lord," turned, and ran as fast as his long

legs would carry him. I hadn't expected such a violent

reaction, and I almost got fired.