Central West Virginia's Guide To Life

A DOSE OF MOUNTAIN THERAPY
By Kim Butler  

11/07 The Snake Pit

There has always been something about snakes that scares the daylights out of people. Maybe it is because they are so eerily quiet, or because they look so cold and evil. Most of time, I think it's because they have the element of surprise in their favor - you just never seem to know they're around until you are too close for comfort.

I never feared snakes too much. My nerves will shatter at the sight of bears or spiders, but growing up in the country, you just got used to having snakes around. When we moved away after high school, snakes disappeared off my radar - we didn't see them much in our subdivided neighborhood.

Years later, when it came time to move back to West Virginia, I still didn't give snakes much thought. That was until we unknowingly purchased The Snake Pit.

Buying The Snake Pit
It took us a while to find some suitable land to build a house on. Richard had too many criteria - it had to be near town, had to have a creek, had to have a view, had to have a lot of hardwoods, blah, blah, blah. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. On our budget, there were slim pickins' to choose from.

Myself, I was more flexible. I wanted near the schools and town. (I like convenience over remoteness). Other than that, my only restriction was that I didn't get stuck in an old shack up a holler somewhere. That didn't seem like too much to ask. Richard agreed.

My brother heard about some land for sale nearby. It fit most of our needs and there was a nice spot on the ridge top to build a home, so after several months of negotiating, we bought it. It did have a 100-year-plus house on the property that was in pretty rough shape - so bad that it rated a big fat $0 value on the appraisal report. That's pretty bad.

I hadn't even been inside the old place. I assumed the plan was to tear it down. Oh, and I forgot to mention, it was up a narrow holler with a rough access road.

It was mid-summer and school would be starting in a few weeks, so I began looking for a rental house to live in. Then I got a call one morning from Richard while he was working out of town. He said he had an idea that would help us out tremendously and save us money. I was anxious to hear it.

"I know it's a little rough around the edges, but what do think about moving into the old house for a few months?"

I literally dropped the phone. Did I hear that right? What happened to this "don't put me in a shack up a holler" bit?

Against better judgment, I finally agreed. Richard said he would make the place livable and it would just be a few months. I wasn't quite sure how to break the news to our kids, who were ages 8 and 7. They had only lived in new houses their Daddy had built. Our daughter, Alayna, is afraid of anything with more than two legs, so if she saw just one critter, we were in trouble.

We packed up for the first of many moving trips. I can't say it was a pretty sight. We had a purple truck with the log cabin on the back. Our more valuable items were in there. We also had a large open trailer packed with tools, odds and ends, lumber items piled underneath a hodgepodge of assorted furniture, boxes and trash bags. We looked like a modern version of the Clampetts driving a log cabin, hauling a load of trash to the nearest junkyard. There was even a recliner strapped on top and lanterns hanging off the back.

On the road, we got lots of laughs, finger-pointing and the occasional thumbs up. When we finally arrived, it was after midnight. It was awfully dark in that holler, no lights anywhere in sight, and Richard realized we didn't have a key. (I'm not even sure why the old place was locked up.) There was a metal slab door with a hasp the size of a 2 x 4 and a keyed lock big enough to secure Fort Knox. I knew there wasn't anything of value in there. It was the last place in the county anybody would want to break in, believe me. Honestly, if you leaned too hard against the wall, the whole house was liable to fall over.

The First Encounter
After a few attempts to enter through the front, we remembered there was a back door. In pitch black darkness with one small flashlight, the four of us tromped our way through hip-high weeds and many trash piles to the backyard. The light caught a glare, and right near the back entrance lay a nicely-sized copperhead in our path. The back door wasn't an option anymore.

The only way left was to break in the kitchen window, which was small and high off the ground. The kids were already upset and scared and no amount of bribing was going to get them in that window. Desperate, I even offered a new Mp3 player, but the snake had made an unforgettable impression and they weren't going to budge.

By now it was 1:30 a.m. and we still couldn't figure out how to break into our own old shack up a holler. Richard decided to take desperate measures and somehow managed to get the kitchen window open. He crawled in, turned on a light and found a way to get us in.

The battle had just begun, though. I couldn't convince the kids to go to sleep anywhere in the house. It was dark and creepy. They just knew the snake was lurking somewhere nearby. (Frankly, they were probably right.) After several hours of failed negotiations and many crying spells, I broke out the Benadryl. We all took a dose and finally settled down.

We were sure glad to see daylight that morning. The snake had come and gone and we were hoping for a better day. We were about to find out though, that he had many "friends and family" around the place, most of them preferring to live inside rather than outside.

I was just about to see firsthand how snakes could scare the daylights out of someone.

Hoping to simplify their lives, Kim Butler and her family recently returned to Calhoun County after 20 years near Charlotte, North Carolina. They spend their free time putting their old farm back together, keeping the wildlife out of the old house and honing their country skills. They plan to build a log home soon. You can contact Kim at kimbutler(at)frontiernet.net.