The Snake Pit

I have been reading a couple of stories every night to my boys from this little book that my Grandparents gave me called "Guess What Grandpa Saw," and they LOVE it. This is their favorite so far, and I actually read it last night for the first time too. Here it is as told by my Grandma Hawkins about Grandpa:


In Ruby Valley, Nevada we had a small ranch. It was beautiful but had one problem- snakes. Often when Grandpa would go out in the yard or into the field, rattlesnakes would be there. Our neighbors were Shoshone Indians. Near their homes was a den of snakes. The Indians worried that snakes would bite their children as they did bite cattle, horses, sheep, and dogs. Grandpa was a young man with small children too. He looked carefully down into the snake den and saw hundreds of rattlesnakes in balls and crawling all over eachother.
Grandpa and the Indian men packed four hundred pounds of T.N.T. explosives on horses and went up to the snake den. They lowered the two and a half pound blocks of T.N.T. down to the snakes. They taped a blasting cap on the prima cord with a twelve inch fuse. Three of the Indians ran away. The chief stayed to help Grandpa. Then Grandpa got a match and the chief said "I tink I go." Grandpa lit the fuse and ran after the Indians to a big boulder they had chosed for shelter. The blast went off and hundreds of snakes and rocks flew high into the air. Most of the snakes were dead. Thise in the snake pit were dead too. The Indians thanked Grandpa. They felt much safer.