Unrattled Mom

Reporting from Quiltropolis

Back in 1984 (in Lincoln Township, Madison County, Iowa) at age 34, I killed a rattlesnake with a shovel. The snake, 42 inches long, was stretched out on the gravel driveway of the farm where my family lived. Crotalus horridus was napping in the sunshine, his/her head pointed toward the pasture, the tail—with the distinctive rattles, toward me.

I knew the traditional snake-killing method was to chop the head off, but since I had never killed a snake before, I sneaked up behind it with my shovel. Knees knocking, I whacked him/her on the head, hard, which woke him/her up and made him/her really, really angry. I spun the shovel handle into chopping position and decapitated him/her with a single blow.

Knees still knocking, I put the baby, Rebecca, my youngest, in the car seat in the pickup and drove to town (seven miles!) with the emergency brake on.

Back in the 1970s, when I returned to Iowa with my first husband (to restore the little farmhouse my father was born in), people mentioned the rattlesnakes of Madison County. Some of them mentioned rattlesnake roundups.

According to local lore, the early (white) settlers found in the area twenty-four inches of fertile topsoil, limestone outcroppings, and an abundance of rattlesnakes. The snakes were so thick, farming was a dangerous operation. That’s why, in 1848, a group of homesteaders divided into teams and agreed that the company killing the greatest number of serpents would receive from each man on the losing side a quantity of corn. The first public celebration of any kind in fact was a Fourth of July gathering during which the rattles of the killed snakes—between three and four thousand—were counted.

A few years after I killed my first rattlesnake, I had to kill another one. That time I used a .22 caliber rifle, which as some may know, shoots teensy-tiny bullets. I had never fired a gun before.

The snake was coiled under an oak tree in the yard, hissing at a kitten. I sequestered the kids on the porch and used the telephone, which in that era was attached to the wall in the kitchen, to call my then-husband, who was in town visiting his elderly aunt at one of the nursing homes.

I knew that loading a gun indoors was not wise, so I took it one step at a time, absorbing one step, scooting outside to implement the step, returning to the phone for the next one. Finally ready, knees knocking again, I shot the snake several times.

The Des Moines Register got wind of it, called me long distance, and sent a photographer down to Madison County. The story ran on the front page, above the fold, on July 1, 1987.

By then, I was already a slightly famous quilter, having been the Iowa winner in the 1986 Great American Quilt Contest, a competition which commemorated the 100^th anniversary of France’s gift of the Statue of Liberty to America. The Register had run a tiny item about my quilt, with a B&W photo of it, on the . . . ahem . . . Women’s Page. In Winterset, after the story ran, I was much more famous as a snake-killer.

Naturally I made a commemorative quilt (36”x36”) titled “Unrattled Mom.” I used a hand applique technique called “needle-turn,” which, believe me, is a lot harder than loading a gun.

Last summer, the Door County (WI) Quilters Guild invited me to speak at an event celebrating their 25^th year. I presented a trunk show of quilts, including Unrattled Mom. I had the newspaper clipping with me and thought it would be fun read it aloud, over thirty-five years after the event.

Even though I was familiar with the story, as I read to the 80 or so women, many of them in my age group, I became increasingly annoyed by the reporter’s tone—lines like, “Just call her Annie Oakley,” “She knows more about quilts,” and the headline at the top of the break to a subsequent page, “Woman forgot how to load.” (I didn’t forget. Remember, I had never fired a gun before.)

I say to you, former Register reporter Tom Alex, no (particular offense meant), that if in 1987 I were the woman I am now, I would have asked you, “How many timber rattlers have you decapitated with a shovel?” “Could you load and hit a coiled rattler with a .22?”

P.S. Snakes, even rattlesnakes, are good for the environment. In 2024, it’s shocking that people yanked snakes out of their habitat in order to kill them. I would never kill a nonpoisonous snake, and only killed those rattlesnakes because I had children then, and the snakes were in our yard.