Serving Greater Bluffton Since 1987

The Bluffton Eccentric was the first and only newspaper the town of Bluffton has had in fifty years. We felt such a kinship with them that we asked Graham Bullock, publisher of The Bluffton Eccentric, if we could resurrect articles from previous issues and republish them. Graham graciously gave his permission and loaned us volumes of old papers. It has been a treat for me to read them and it is with great honor that I get to share them with everyone again. So, kick back, relax and get ready for a blast from the past.

The Bluffton Vignette By Dean Poucher

he doorbell rang late that Sunday afternoon and it was Fred and his son who told me they had something I might want to see in the back of their jeep. They had been coon hunting and both were wearing hard hats and headlights which were still on in the coolness of the gathering dusk.

The jeep was really rigged up right with a dog box protruding out the back, a sort of shallow box on top of that and a split canvas screen to divide the folks up front from the critters behind. As I walked up to the jeep I knew something had the hounds really upset. They whined and complained loudly as only hunting dogs can without actually setting up a ruckus barking and all.

Then, when both of the men turned their headlights on the shallow wooden box it was very apparent why the dogs were complaining. My own reaction was a jerk backwards at the sight of the big canebreak rattlesnake that almost completely filled the box that formed the top of the dog box underneath. Fred assured me that the snake was dead and I moved in for a closer look under the glare of his headlight. A bullet hole from a small caliber weapon like a .22 was placed neatly between the snake’s eyes and I congratulated whoever did this job of shooting. Being that accurate under the strain of a live deadly dangerous critter right nearby represented some very good shooting.

Fred said the dogs found the rattler within minutes of being let out and when he had shot the rattler it just sort of took some of the starch out of the both he and his son. They led up the dogs and were headed home when they decided to drop by and show me a real LowCountry canebreak rattler. I was terribly thrilled. The big snake had black chevron-like stripes every few inches based from head to toe. The color of the body was cream brown and I could easily see that in one of our low ground cane breaks he would be almost impossible to see. Until it was too late. It wasn’t an especially long set of rattlers which have supposedly told the approximate age of rattlers from time immemorial but we now know that the numbers of rattles on a snake doesn’t mean much, because they are broken off and grow back several times a year. I was somewhat taken by the black eyes under the thin stripes of the black mask across the snakes head. I noticed with a start that Fred was leaning against the box with his hand inside the snake box, his fingers curled almost touching the snakes body. Not me, I thought. And then things began to happen in such rapidity that it takes much longer to even begin to describe them then they actually occurred. I was aware that I was operating under the many superstitions about rattlers that I had heard and read about over the years despite some exhaustive research in Croatalus Adamanteus, the huge eastern diamondback articles I’d written several years ago. That’s why I questioned silently about Fred practically touching the snake in the box. My wife, Ann suddenly walked up and reacted instinctively as two things happened simultaneously. She reached up to the box so she could see the snake. As she did Fred’s headlight swept across the eyes of the snake and I saw the “life” come back into them as clearly as a red flair. I grabbed Ann and literally lifted her rapidly away from the box, while I fairly screamed “It’s Alive!” Fred moved his hand away quickly and there was a sharp crack as the snake struck at what had been the heat of Fred’s hand in the box. The snake, about five feet long and as thick as a man’s arm, came slashing and whirling out of the box like something possessed and I believe the four of us people went high-tailing it off each in a different direction.

Rattlesnakes can and do come back to life.