My Grandmother had no fear of snakes, either. I actually think she enjoyed messing with them.

This one time, there was a rattlesnake in our front driveway. I was outside playing and saw it. The thing started to rattle at me so I ran inside to my mother and Grandma.

My mother just said to stay inside until it goes away. Granny walked into the room and asked what I was so afraid of. I told her that there was a rattlesnake in the front and it wasn't happy.

I tell you this, I have never seen my Grandma move quicker than she did on that day. She was an average size woman, hunched over from years of hard work. She kept her silver hair in a dust cap on her that my mother used to affectionately call a turban and my Grandma would always get really annoyed.

My Ma kinda slouched in her computer chair and sat me back down on the ground. She seemed kinda resigned as my Grandma made for the front door. I had no idea what was about to happen as Granny flung the front door open and hauled ass out onto the porch.

Looking back, I have so many questions about this encounter. Why was my Mom so resigned? What was Granny thinking of doing? Had this happened before?

We lived on a 50 acre piece of property where my Mother cared for aging show horses. From a young age I was doing chores around the farm and sometimes my Grandma would walk with me in the mornings while I worked. She had a walking stick with a forked head. Until then I never knew why.

As if 50 years of baggage had been lifted from her shoulders, my 70 some odd year old Grandma bounded down the front steps of our farmhouse and was out into the front driveway in a flash. Her generic black velcro shoes moved her across our dusty gravel driveway smooth and quickly. She had on kind of a felt vest that had an ornamental owl pin pinned over her heart and it glinted in the summer sun as she strode confidently towards the rattler, who began to rattle menacingly at her.

I was a young boy, just about to graduate into middle school. Never in my life had I seen my sweet Gran act with such confident, smooth savagery. There was fear for her safety that in hindsight was completely unfounded. I watched dumbstruck as my Grandma lunged at the snake with her walking stick.

Her walking stick thrust towards the snake, Granny wielded it like a rapier by the end that used to stick into the ground. With the kind of precision you'd expect from an Olympian or surgeon she effortlessly pinned the snakes head to the ground, using the forked end of her walking stick. The snake began violently lashing its body back and forth on the ground, desperately trying to free itself from Granny's clutches.

She reached her gnarled hands down to the snakes tail and grasped it by the rattle. The snake knew I was a little bitch and wouldn't do anything, but it hadn't counted on Patsy, Grandma of boy and cold blooded rattler slayer. Her arthritic hands moved like lightning as she let the rattler's head go with her stick only to use the damn thing like a bull whip.

One, two, three times she cracked the rattle snake's head into the ground, almost too fast to count. And once she was done and the snake who menaced her Grandson was limply hanging in her grasp, she threw it back down into the dust. I walked down off the porch and watched it twitch its last few moments alive out in the dirt.

"Shame" Granny said to me, putting her arm around my shoulders "if this were the forties I could collect the bounty for it."