Many years ago, when I worked for Rock Island Railroad, I had to work on a piece of on track equipment while out in the middle of nowhere. Young, disgusted by my misfortune and eager to get moving, I tossed my toolbox on the ground next to a broken brush cutter and swung myself down to get to work. The ground felt decidedly squirmy and as I looked down I noticed I had sat on a rattlesnake. Luckily for me, I had first thrown my toolbox on it's head. The snake had likely been sunning himself in the midmorning springtime sun when I rudely tossed a metal tool box onto his head and then sat on his body. I came out of there as if fired from a cannon. I then fired up the brush cutter and used the blades to chop the snake into several pieces and fling my tools up to 100 feet.
Since then I have occasionally felt a bit guilty about the incident. The snake had done nothing to me when I attacked it and sat on it. Then, embarrassed by my panic, I used a diesel powered hydraulically driven set of steel blades to chop him to pieces from the safety of the machine's cab.
At the time I thought he must have been eight or nine feet long. In reality he was likely similar to the one in the picture. Fortunately the incident was not captured on film. My co-worker's laughter as he told and retold the story for the next year was bad enough.
