Fishing one spring day a few years ago, the wife was alternately reading a magazine and talking to me about imortant things while I was trying to fish. (Why do they always do that?) A good sized water snake comes swimming along, and foolishly I pointed him out to my wife. She is terrified of snakes.

I said "Hey watchis" and cast my crankbait out past him. She said something threatening to me, but I was already cranking. I jerked the crank right across his back, and he got confused and swam right toward the boat.

The snake swam approximately 6 inches toward the boat and she hit me from behind like a line backer. In a blind panic she tried to climb up me like I was a tree. As a staggered around the front deck, she reached the top of me and her knees/feet pounded into my lower back running at full speed. Meanwhile she was using my left ear for a handle, crushing my skull in a death grip, and screaming in a bloodcurdling fashion into my right ear. By the time the snake got alongside, I was taking a horrible beating. It felt like some folks had ganged up and were using me for batting practice.

My left hand was busy trying to keep my left ear atttached to my head, my right was waving my cranking rod around weakly. I summoned the last of my waning strength and gave him a swat with my fishing pole. He turned and swam away. The little woman climbed down off me, slapped my hard on the back, and went and sat in the passenger seat arms folded. Prolly would have hurt except my back was numb.

I stowed the trolling motor, checked my ear for bleeding, limped down and gingerly lowered my carcass into the drivr's seat. The wife stared straight ahead, puffed up something awful. I reached an exploratory hand over toward her knee and earned myself another slap on the arm for my trouble. After a while I said (paraphrasing here to keep the board clean) "dang baby, you just beat the flying crap out of 220 pound man, and you ain't 95 pounds soakin wet". She thawed out after a while, and we laughed about it.

My ears rung for an hour, and I was sore for days. Nowadays if she's with me and I see a snake, I do a quick 180 and stay real quiet about it.