She let me into the building, and then I started to look around. “I guess I never really thought that you would just have snakes all over the place like this.”
I looked at the wall to ceiling cages that housed multiple types of venomous snakes.
“Pretty cool, huh?” she asked.
“Very.” I dropped down to look at one rather large rattlesnake. “How many kinds of snakes do you have here?”
“Since the region of Montana we’re in only has one type of venomous snake—the prairie rattlesnake—that’s mostly all that we have on hand, this being a local business. There are other, much bigger companies that’ll do all of them, but the owner of this one doesn’t see the need. We have some frozen for other venomous snakes found throughout the country, but mostly we don’t need them.”
“How long do you keep these snakes?” I asked.
“We got most of them as babies,” she admitted. “Do you want to watch one get milked?”
I blinked. “Um, sure.”
“Hey, Charleigh!”
A tiny slip of a woman about the size of a doll walked out wearing black pants, a white AC/DC t-shirt and combat boots.
I immediately noticed the Marines tattoo on her forearm.
“Hey, Birdee.” Charleigh smiled. That smile dropped when she saw me. “What’s going on?”
“This is Creed,” Birdee said. “He wants to see what we do here.”
Charleigh smiled, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “Who are you wanting to show him on?”
“We’ll go with the big boy,” Birdee suggested. “He needs done today anyway.”
“How often can you milk a snake?” I wondered, my mind totally enraptured with everything that was going on at that moment.
Charleigh had pulled a plastic box down from the top shelf that had a lid on it with a lot of numbers and letters on the side.
She struggled with the weight, and I wondered just how big this snake was.
I had my answer when she opened the lid and Birdee reached in with a snake hook to get him out.
“Whoa,” I said as she took the four feet in length snake out of the bin and placed him on the table.
The snake was fairly docile, unlike the ones that I saw in the wild.
Within seconds a huge black padded mat came into Charleigh’s hands. She pressed down on the snake almost as fast as Birdee rolled the hook up the length of the snake’s neck. Seconds later she had the snake by the head and she was walking it toward a glass beaker with a plastic covering over it.
My heart was in my throat as I watched her do her thing.
The snake struck the plastic with a satisfying pop, and then the snake’s venom was released into the container. A sickly yellow color that was similar to the look of gasoline.
“Whoa,” I said as she did this two more times. “That’s incredibly satisfying yet downright terrifying.”
Charleigh, who was holding the snake’s writhing body, tossed me a genuine smile this time. “I can’t say that I wasn’t in total shock when I had to come in here and help her.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
Everyone jumped at the angry male voice that came barging into the room.
Charleigh even partially dropped the snake.
If it wasn’t for my hold on the snake, almost in an automatic response, Birdee’s hold would’ve slipped on the head.
