Lewis Blanton said he was out with his son, his son's friend, and their dog checking on his garden at his Chumuckla home when he found an enormous rattle snake. "I almost stepped on it," he said. "It almost gave me a heart attack." Blanton said his dog went after it so he had to act fast. "He got bit last year. You'd think he'd have learned." Blanton said he had to use the stick with which he's holding the snake in the picture, to kill it. Originally, it was laid out, Blanton said, but coiled up when it noticed their presence. "It had a knot in it. I figured it ate a squirrel or something." Blanton said he raises free range chickens and turkeys and always has to contend with animals and snakes. He's used to snakes, he said, but for some reason this one left him shaken up. Every day, Blanton said, he sees waves on the dirt roads he travels, indicating snake tracks. Blanton said he has a six-foot snake skin in the house, but he didn't bother doing anything with the remains of this one. "I was done," he said. While the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission recommends discouraging rodents, a snake's primary food source, from nesting by removing brush, lumber or other debris accumulations, rural living means dealing with wildlife all the time. "People need to be careful," Blanton said. "Snakes of this size are not very uncommon; they occasionally get this large."
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Chumuckla man kills large rattle snake