The Sunday dinner table is neatly set.

There are colorful plates of salad complete with green lettuce, bright red tomatoes and cucumbers.

And then there is a plate stacked with the remains of a 5.5-foot timber rattlesnake. Salads and snake for everyone!

Yes, it may not have been the most typical dish ever prepared at the Rawls’ Sandy Run home, but in some ways it has always been a family favorite which periodically pokes and slithers its way onto the dinner table, says mom Anne Rawls.

“It is a change from chicken,” Rawls said. “It was delicious.”

“The meal got two thumbs up all the way around the room,” she said.

And it is pretty easy to make.

Just cut the meat into three-inch pieces, salt and pepper the pieces, add a little cornmeal, wait until the grease gets real hot and then fry it like fish, Rawls said.

“Imagine if you fried fish and took a batch of chicken wings and cooked the chicken wings in the fish grease,” she said. “It tastes like chicken wings in fish grease.”

For the Rawls’ eating snake is nothing new.

Her husband, Charles, has been dining on it for most of his life.

But this was extra special.

“This is the biggest one I have gotten to cook,” Rawls said, explaining how typically when snake is eaten the family also has cooked fish with it.

Not this time.

“This was a big boy, it did not require much else,” she said, noting there was plenty to go around. “Even the neighbors had some. They liked it.”

The rattles were left for other critters such as ants to enjoy.

Out of retirement - the catch

It was early Friday evening July 25 when Whiteside, the beagle owned by Rawls’ son Karl Klippenstein, was frolicking at grandpa and grandma James and Carol Russell’s 50-acre farm in Cordova.

The 4-year-old beagle, known for its prowess hunting game, has for the most part retired his hunting ways after nearly being killed by a truck two years ago during a rabbit hunt.

The move to the farm was seen as a good one for Whiteside in that he could be away from other dogs and the intensity of the hunting life.

“He was a puppy and he liked to run deer with the rest of them,” Rawls said. “The dogs took to running a rabbit and he did not know what to do.”

After deciding chasing rabbits was not for him, Whiteside went back to the roadside to rest, only to be struck by a vehicle.

“It was a miracle he was still alive,” Rawls said. “He is now retired and just goofing around on the farm.”

You may be able to take the dog out of hunting, but you can’t take the hunt out of the dog.

For one day at least, Whiteside’s retirement was over.

“He was barking and carrying on like crazy, and not running or anything,” Rawls said.

Near the farm’s dog kennel, there it was – a 5.5-foot timber rattler with 16 rattles at the end of its tail.

“He has different barks,” James said. “When he was barking like that, he is barking at something right there. It could be a snake, it could be a bullfrog. ... It sounds like something has torn him up. He sounds like he is in pain.”

“I walked over and saw it was a snake and got a little stick and ran him out into the open so I could get him,” James said, noting that this snake was by far the longest ever seen on his property.

“There is only one kind of snake I am scared of and they are all politicians.”

Russell put the snake in a little barrel for safekeeping overnight so his grandson, Karl, could see it alive.

The next morning, pictures were taken with the rattler and then it was a knife to the head that eventually did it in.

“It was probably looking for food,” James said. “There were plenty of bullfrogs out here that were missing for a couple of days. I am sure he ate quite a few of them. They keep the mice down and the large insects down.”

Carol Russell does not have a fondness for the creatures.

“I just took a picture and wanted it away from here,” she said, noting with a shake of the head that she and snakes just never got along.

With the eating done, what is going to be done with the skin?

“I am gonna dry it out and do something with it,” Rawls said. “It is pretty large and I haven’t decided. Probably let Dad do that since he did catch him.”

Perhaps a family room display?

“I think it would look nice stretched out on a board and hung in the main room (at the Cordova farm),” Rawls said. “Kinda as a reminder of why the old timers call the area ‘Rattlesnake Crossing.’”

Or maybe something else like boots, hats or a belt?

For Carol, anywhere but in her house would be fine.

“I don’t care to look at that thing every day,” she said.

T&D Staff Writer Gene Zaleski can be reached by e-mail at gzaleski @timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5551. Discuss this and other stories online at The TandD.com.

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