Confession time!  I'm one of those people who has a deathly fear of snakes.  If one is in the road, I will swerve to avoid driving over it.  I have the paranoid idea that the tires will throw it into the underbody of the car where it will lurk and lie in wait for me to open the door so it can attack.

From my youngest memory I lived with the motto that "the only good snake is a dead snake".  Leave it up to the military to change that.....for the worse.  My motto is now "the only good snake is a purse, shoes, belt, wallet or any other item you can make from snakeskin.

Funnybones Beware! Tickling Ahead!
It was during one of our regular 45 day "camping trips" that my fear of snakes made itself known in a big way.  The 9th Infantry is a "desert" unit.  That means we trained and were equipped for desert environments.  In an effort to be sure we really understood what desert environment means, arrangements were made to send us to Ft Bliss TX. (note: the only "bliss" we found was on the day we loaded up to go home).  Ft Bliss is located in a true desert.  Cactus, tumbleweeds, dirt devils and plenty of sand.  And one more little creature called  a rattlesnake.

Now had we been the only group there, perhaps things would have went along fine.  However the Army in its infinite wisdom decided to combine our training mission with Airborne Rangers training mission.  The Rangers are made up of men and women who are let's just say one fry short of a Happy Meal.  They think it's fun to jump out of perfectly good airplanes while they are flying and trudging through a swamp in water up to their armpits is a nature walk.  So they aren't quite right in my book.

As the specialist in charge of Medical Holding for our platoon, My field time was spent pulling guard duty, Playing cards or tending the rare patient who was medically barred from duty but not ill enough for the hospital.  Our field time was peaceful and somewhat boring. Leave it up to the "Psychos  from Hell" to invade our little camp with a bag of rattle snakes.   A 33 gallon Hefty bag over half full of snakes and they were on a mission.  Their objective?  To secure a scalpel to be used in the skinning of said snakes prior to spitting and roasting them.  It was only natural someone would point them in my direction.

Now a Scalpel is something you don't just give out.  Especially to people you already believe could use a bit of time on the Psychiatrist's couch.  Of course I asked them why they needed it.  An explanation was forth coming in the form of "show and tell".  I followed the Corporal outside of my cozy little tent.  Outside under the camouflage netting were two more psychos with the bag.  They were more than happy to show me what was in the bag. 

They were not so happy to find themselves tangling in the netting with a panicking medic.  The brass were not so happy to order a new camouflage net either.  I was very happy since they had to give me a shot of Valium to calm me down enough to cut us all out of the net.

Since that time two things happened.  I was given a clinical diagnosis of  Herpetophobia (specifically snakes) and dead snakes have made the list of bad snakes too.