Rattlesnake

The summer after I was born, my Parents left me in the care of my paternal Grandmother, Tatjana. They drove to Canada for an August vacation. Mom and Dad met up with old friends on a lake island. It was a great spot. The cabin was clean, and it was nice to be carefree again.

My Mom and her friend discovered that the island had an abundance of wild, low-growing blueberries. Berry picking became a daily activity. The women gathered the blueberries so that they could make Lithuanian blueberry dumplings, "Šaltanosiai." "Šaltanosiai" means "cold noses" because the dumplings look like blue noses. The dumplings are a summer delicacy, served with sour cream (of course) and granulated sugar. Tatjana used to make them in Suburban Chicago, too. I remember plates of them, freshly boiled, cooling off on the kitchen counter.

The blueberry picking came to a halt one afternoon when the women heard a rustling sound in blueberry bushes. It was a rattlesnake. My Dad killed the rattler. He and the women took several photographs to commemorate the moment.

When I asked my Mom about this episode, she said, "That was the end of the blueberry picking."

Near Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada, August 1959. Dad shows the women the rattlesnake. There's the shadow of another photographer in the lower left corner.

*     *     *     *     *

Near Parry Sound, Canada, August 1959. The story of the rattlesnake probably played large in my Dad's memory because it's the only time Dad killed a living thing.