My rattlesnake encounter yesterday brought to mind a story Dad told us about his teen years in Casper, Wyoming.

Dad moved from Salida, Colorado, to Casper with his mother and two sisters when he was twelve. His father had passed away and the four of them went to live with Aunt Emma and Uncle Herman. Both were his mother's siblings. Emma, was a school teacher in Casper, Wyoming and Herman was a widow working as a field clerk for an oil refinery at the time. (Dad always said Uncle Herman was his favorite relative. Uncle Herman tragically drowned in the Yellowstone River in 1942 where he owned a sheep ranch.)

One summer Dad and several of his friends would hop on their bikes and head to some rocky hills outside of town. There they would dig into the rocks to find dens of rattlesnakes, and then put them in buckets.

This is where the story ends for me. I thought they put them in buckets and sold them for fifty cents a snake to someone who used the venom.  My brother has a different ending tho. He remembers Dad telling him the hunting came to a halt that summer when Aunt Emma found a mason jar filled with rattles on Dad's chest of drawers! Dad told my brother it was the maddest he'd ever seen his Aunt.

Dad knew I loved all animals and I think he feared I'd think less of him if I knew he'd killed those damn critters - now I just wish he'd killed a few while he visited his Uncle Herman at the sheep ranch on the Yellowstone!