Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Sometimes, there’s a story that’s too good not to be told. However, for whatever reason, there’s no teller for this tale because the cat got the teller’s tongue.

But, according to talk around town, it was in the aftermath of Hurricane Sally that this tale happened.

The main character in the story decided not to put off until tomorrow what she could do the morning after the storm So, she located the items necessary to gather and transport the debris Sally had scattered around the yard and merrily went about the job at hand.

Since the cat got “her” tongue, let’s call her “Cat-ie.”

As Catie was making her way around the yard, picking up sticks, raking leaves and gathering other assorted debris that Sally left behind, she began taking pride in the work that was being accomplished.

The smile spreading across her face suddenly gave way to an expression of confused surprise as a gray tree squirrel fell from the tree and skirted between her legs.

Before a horrified scream escaped her throat, she looked up into the tree for fear another squired was giving chase. But, she was horror-stricken as a huge, black snake was falling from the tree, in suspended animation, and she, Catie was the bullseye of its emergency landing target.

Perhaps, at this point, Catie levitated or, maybe it was a tailwind from Hurricane Sally that shifted the snake’s flight pattern, but, the big, black snake landed with a thud just out striking distance.

Being a semi-country girl, Catie ran to look for an instrument of sudden death but not a scoop, a hoe, a pickax or a sling-blade could be found.

The big, black snake had survived the fall. It was moving and beginning to get its bearings.

The fear of snakes was beginning to overtake Catie’s sense of reason. She ran to her neighbor’s house and banged, frightfully, on the door and yelled in a shrill voice for “A gun! A gun!” The dumbfounded neighbor had neither a shotgun nor an AK-47 Catie was pleading for. But, out of the house emerged  … “The Plumber.” He quickly put the leaking pipe aside. Killing snakes became his game.

The Plumber maintained his under-pressure composure and went to the aid of the damsel in distress.

Fortunately, Catie’s neighbor was the proud processor of a razor-sharp hoe from the local hardware. With a few swings, The Plumber rendered the big, black snake harmless, rather lifeless. The Plumber first thought the snake to be of the non-poisonous kind but later determined that it was a killer snake after all.

Now, here’s where the snake story gets a little cloudy because the cat got Catie’s tongue again.

She didn’t know or couldn’t remember what she, the neighbor and The Plumber did with the remains of the big, black, poisonous snake.

It would be my guess that, with a hoe around, they probably hacked that big, black snake into little pieces and scattered them here and yonder so they wouldn’t reconnect before the sun went down.

But, my better judgement says they, who don’t believe in such non-sense, put the big, black dead snake in a jute sack and left him to be picked up by the city garbage truck. Either way, it’s a good story of the day Hurricane Sally rained squirrels and snakes in Troy, Alabama.