It's about time I thank the rattlesnake that bit my father's right hand in 1962. I wouldn't be alive without that happening.
It took me years to figure out how much I a freak accident, an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake coiled in a fallen treetop in Yazoo County nearly a half-century ago. A thirteen-year-old version of my father didn't know what happen while squirrel hunting with his father, a county road foreman in the poor Mississippi county.
This is how the rattlesnake with 12 rattlers almost killed Daddy:
Billy Don Ward, now 64, grew up near a community called Benton. One thing most Mississippi country boys are taught is a love for fishing and hunting. My dad started hunting with Papaw at an early age. Papaw would lecture Daddy when he broke sticks, trying to tiptoe through the woods.
"He said, If you keep stepping on those sticks, we're never going to kill a squirrel,'" Dad recalled his father saying.
But those who knew Papaw before he went to heaven know he peppered his words with cursing.
My future father was a veteran at retrieving squirrels by his early teens. Whenever Papaw shot the squirrel Dad would get it. The day in September 1962 the snake bit Dad, nothing was out of the ordinary. Papaw shot a squirrel and Dad went to fetch it. About 200 yards from home on a steep hill, Dad saw the squirrel's tail, poking out of a broken tree top on the ground.
He didn't know a rattlesnake had claimed the squirrel.
"When I reached down, the squirrel fell out of my hand," Dad said. "When I reached back down the second time, the snake grabbed me."
It turns out "grabbing" him meant that the snake's two venomous fangs pierced into the meat of his right hand between his thumb and index finger. Papaw jerked the snake off of his son's hand when he discovered what happened. He killed the snake before leaving the woods for the hospital. He even took the snake with them.
About a hour later, doctors at the Yazoo City hospital weren't sure Daddy would live through the snake bite. At first, his hand swelled to the size of a basketball, he remembers. Hospital staff even had to restrain his arms and legs to him from "climbing the walls" from delirium.
Spending weeks in the hospital recovering, he heard many diagnoses about his hand and arm.
"They started talking about taking the arm off at my shoulders," Dad said. "But I just came out with a crippled hand."
When the snake dislodged from Dad's hand, some of the venom and blood drained out of his body. Dad survived without needing an arm or hand amputated. The lost blood and venom saved his life and body parts. That hand later healed, all but his trigger finger.
It took me years to figure out how much I a freak accident, an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake coiled in a fallen treetop in Yazoo County nearly a half-century ago. A thirteen-year-old version of my father didn't know what happen while squirrel hunting with his father, a county road foreman in the poor Mississippi county.
This is how the rattlesnake with 12 rattlers almost killed Daddy:
Billy Don Ward, now 64, grew up near a community called Benton. One thing most Mississippi country boys are taught is a love for fishing and hunting. My dad started hunting with Papaw at an early age. Papaw would lecture Daddy when he broke sticks, trying to tiptoe through the woods.
"He said, If you keep stepping on those sticks, we're never going to kill a squirrel,'" Dad recalled his father saying.
But those who knew Papaw before he went to heaven know he peppered his words with cursing.
My future father was a veteran at retrieving squirrels by his early teens. Whenever Papaw shot the squirrel Dad would get it. The day in September 1962 the snake bit Dad, nothing was out of the ordinary. Papaw shot a squirrel and Dad went to fetch it. About 200 yards from home on a steep hill, Dad saw the squirrel's tail, poking out of a broken tree top on the ground.
He didn't know a rattlesnake had claimed the squirrel.
"When I reached down, the squirrel fell out of my hand," Dad said. "When I reached back down the second time, the snake grabbed me."
It turns out "grabbing" him meant that the snake's two venomous fangs pierced into the meat of his right hand between his thumb and index finger. Papaw jerked the snake off of his son's hand when he discovered what happened. He killed the snake before leaving the woods for the hospital. He even took the snake with them.
About a hour later, doctors at the Yazoo City hospital weren't sure Daddy would live through the snake bite. At first, his hand swelled to the size of a basketball, he remembers. Hospital staff even had to restrain his arms and legs to him from "climbing the walls" from delirium.
Spending weeks in the hospital recovering, he heard many diagnoses about his hand and arm.
"They started talking about taking the arm off at my shoulders," Dad said. "But I just came out with a crippled hand."
When the snake dislodged from Dad's hand, some of the venom and blood drained out of his body. Dad survived without needing an arm or hand amputated. The lost blood and venom saved his life and body parts. That hand later healed, all but his trigger finger.
Five years after the snake bite, 1967, the Vietnam War still wagied in southeast Asia. When Dad volunteered for military service, he was disqualified because of his hand injury.
If he'd fought in the military, he may not have married Mom, the former Carol McMichael, on Aug. 28, 1971. If they would have never married, my two sisters and I likely wouldn't have been born.
How different would things be if Billy Ward had stayed home that day?
[A version of the previous column appeared in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal on November 7, 2005.]
If he'd fought in the military, he may not have married Mom, the former Carol McMichael, on Aug. 28, 1971. If they would have never married, my two sisters and I likely wouldn't have been born.
How different would things be if Billy Ward had stayed home that day?
[A version of the previous column appeared in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal on November 7, 2005.]
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