It was the last week of June and I was in the middle of the hatching season. Just before dark I went out to the barn to tuck it in for the night: top off water and feed, make sure heat bulbs were burning, turn eggs in the incubator, and double check the setting hens to make sure everyone was on their nest for the night. I noticed one of the game hens off her nest so I went closer to investigate. She had been setting on seven peafowl eggs that were due to hatch in four days. As I started to put my hand in the nest to see if the eggs were still warm I noticed what appeared to be a huge snake curled around the eggs. Nothing jump starts the adrenaline like the realization that you have almost grabbed a feeding snake and you don’t know where the head is!
I turned on my heels and started running to the house hollering “Giant snake. Come help!” I am well into my fifties, weigh over two hundred pounds and have a bad back, so I wasn’t running nearly as fast as I wanted to. I burst through the front door with one final shout at the top of my lungs. Simultaneously I saw two cats sliding around a corner in fear and my husband, Jimmy, bolt straight up out of his recliner.
I took a gulp of air, shouted “Snake, I need help in the barn!” and took off running back to the barn. As I was opening the barnyard gate I glanced over my shoulder to see Jimmy gaining ground on me with a 410 shot gun in his hand.
Living in rural Alabama, we have our share of experiences with snakes, but each one is still a true event for me. On our farm we have encountered four poisonous varieties that can be extremely dangerous and several nonvenomous varieties that are considered harmless. I have often wondered how something that can make you hurt yourself could be considered harmless .Past experiences made me think this was a chicken snake, one of the “harmless” varieties. They can get quite large with adults running six to seven feet long. When threatened they will coil and strike. The bite can be painful but is not poisonous. The chicken snake is notorious for eating eggs and small birds. There have been instances where the snake has coiled around the neck of a hen, strangled it and then devoured the eggs or chicks.
As we entered the barn, I pointed at the empty nest. Together we crept closer and peered into the bottom of the nest. The barn lights were casting shadows but we both saw what appeared to be a large snake coiled around the peafowl eggs. Jimmy whispered, “Are you sure it’s a chicken snake?” I shouted back “No!” Less than two weeks prior, two of our Great Pyrenees dogs were bitten by a very poisonous snake. The puppy had required a dose of snake anti-venom serum to save her life. After a very brief conversation, we decided the best plan was for Jimmy to get the snake out of the nest using my gripper, a tool I use to pick up shed peacock feathers. It is about three feet long with a pair of handles on one end and a pair of rubber circles on the other end that clamp together when you squeeze the handles. I retrieved the grippers from the incubator room and Jimmy went to work trying to get the snake out of the nest. The grippers weren’t strong enough to pick the snake up, but the snake finally coiled in a ball around them and Jimmy unloaded him onto the barn floor. I pinned him about a foot behind his head with a shovel. As Jimmy took aim with the shot gun, I screamed “Don’t hurt the peacock eggs!” I must have startled him because he missed the snake and shot gun pellets ricocheted all around the barn off of the blade of the shovel. The second shot hit its mark and killed the snake. It was a chicken snake, about six feet long, with the silhouette of two peafowl eggs in it body. I looked at Jimmy and said “Chop his head off!” Not in the mood to argue with his temporarily insane wife, Jimmy took the axe off the barn wall and after many strokes with a very dull axe severed the head from the body of the snake. He stepped back, took a couple of deep breathes, and said “It is all yours.” He then silently watched with disbelief as I slowly worked and squeezed each egg up from the body of the snake. After retrieving both eggs, I immediately rinsed them well, dried them in my tee shirt and tucked them under another nesting game hen. I caught the hen that had been scared off her nest by the snake and coaxed her back onto the remaining five eggs. The next morning I candled all seven eggs and moved them into an incubator that I use for a hatcher. Much to my delight I detected movement in both of the rescued eggs when candling them. An even greater delight was when all seven eggs hatched a few days later, including the two that had been rescued from the stomach of the snake. The fortunate two have been named Jonah and Lucky.
If there is a point to this story, I guess it would be to tell what great efforts many of us will go through to successfully raise peafowl.
Carol Cook
Cook's Peacock Emporium
