My wife Brenda and I live in the mountains on about eight acres of land with regular wildlife visits from deer, turkey, bighorn sheep, and even mountain lions and rattlesnakes.

One of my encounters with a rattlesnake will shock you.

A few summers ago, I was on our wrap around upper deck when I looked down at the cement patio below and saw a coiled rattlesnake soaking up the heat of the cement a couple feet from the hot tub.

I don’t like to kill snakes, but when they start hanging out on a patio where we regularly hang out, it is a problem.

To kill the snake, I didn’t want to go down to the patio and confront it for fear it would slither off the patio and down into the heavily forested ravine adjacent to the patio.

Instead, I ran to our garage and grabbed a cement cinder block, returned to the upper deck and proceeded to drop the heavy block down onto the snake. The block didn’t kill the snake but it clearly wounded it as the snake’s only movement came from its head.

I then grabbed a metal rake and went down and finished killing the three and a half foot snake, severing its head so that it could not strike me, as “dead” snakes are known to do.

Thinking our twin 15-year-old boys would want to see it, I put the body next to the garage and waited until they returned home about four hours later.

Upon their return, they decided to skin the snake and keep the skin. At this point, they grabbed a knife, slit the skin and peeled it off of the snake. They then decided they wanted to eat the snake so they gutted it before dropping it back down on the driveway.

Immediately upon hitting the driveway, the headless, skinless, gutless, four-hour dead rattlesnake coiled and started striking at our boys who were seated next to it. It did this about a half dozen times over about 15 seconds before it finally dropped limp and lifeless to the cement driveway.