The snake that didn't get away, finally...

It was hard to not see this snake in the road in front of our yard one evening last week. I stopped the truck and got out to verify what kind it was. It did not take off when I prodded it with a stick. It coiled and hissed, after which I could see the shape of it's head and the white sacks in it's mouth - a "Cotton Mouth" or Water Moccasin, one of four venomous snakes we have in this part of the Ozarks. This and the Cooperhead are so aggressive they get the automatic death sentence when I find them, so I ran over him twice. Danny drove by, and he squashed its guts out. I came by on the tractor 10 minutes later, and unbelievably, this snake was trying to crawl off the road, so I ran over it twice more, then picked him up with a stick and draped him over my neighbor's barbed wire fence. Came back 30 minutes later and he was GONE! Incredible! It was dark, so I looked for it early next morning and found it belly up about 4 feet away from the fence - finally dead. The moral of the story? For me there are now only two sure ways to kill them out right: (1) cut it's head off with a machete, shovel, or hoe (or a lawn mower as I once did); or (2) shoot it in the head, preferably with shell shot BB's from a pistol or shotgun.