Cowboys are often shown riding the range, holding onto the back of a bull at the rodeo, or gun slinging at bandits. This list appears to have left out one of the major activities of cowboys: stepping into nests of vipers and getting themselves bit. . . .
Don't get me wrong. Steers have big feet and don't tend to watch where they are going. I know damn well that cows are going to step in viper nests. But it's not the cows I'm complaining about. . . .
There are fewer cowboys than there are cows. On most standardized IQ tests, the cowboys score slightly higher, as in perhaps two points. Cowboy mamas tell their young to look where they're going. Hence, cowboys should not step in viper nests very often. But the rules of logic fail to take in the fact tat most cowboys, in their own abominable grammar, ain't got no damned sense! They don't look where they're going, so they step a little too close to viper nests. Since they are supposedly higher on the evolutionary scale than cows, we tolerate them less. So we bite them.
If you haven't guessed, I am a viper. I'm not a particularly poisonous viper, but I am a viper. Cowboys have yet to comprehend the copperheads are more dangerous than most rattlers, too. . . . Naw, they'd rather tell various tales about getting their lives saved because they were alert enough to hear a rattler's rattle. Actually, many of them did get bit, but it's not because we snakes didn't give them ample warning. It's because they were stupid.
Now, back when the west was full of cows, there were four major types of trouble- coyotes, wolves, vipers, and bandits. Coyotes and wolves had voice boxes to let the cowboys know to leave them alone, and the bandits apparently liked to fight. Vipers possessed neither of these qualities.
I had the bad luck to have found a cozy hole to call home on a cattle trail. The cows were bad enough. They are large to people- think of what they're like to a snake! Nor were they quiet animals, all the snorting and snuffing and bellowing of challenges from male to male scared every kangaroo rat and roadrunner I could have eaten away.
If it weren't my intention to complain about the cowboys, I'd have to ask you not to get me started. . . .
There was one particularly annoying fellow, a large, black-bearded braggart by the name of Jim. Jim apparently thought the world revolved around him, as humans are apt to say. From the serpentine point of view, Jim thought the rats would come up and ask him to eat them. He was talking about going hunting and bagging him a buffalo, which was fairly stupid- there were no buffalos this close to the Mexican-American border. I got the feeling most of the cowboys were tempted to tell him to go bag him his buffalo just to get rid of him. The cook, who was female, attempted to explain to him that there was no point as she was already burning supper, but Jim took no heed.
I was trying not to cause a stampede among the cows, and at the same time get out of the herd so that I had even a remote chance of finding my own supper. Jim's big voice echoed slightly, and my sensors picked up every word (I am a snake; I have nothing that can be called real ears. . . .) I almost gave up. Creatures that had ears would find him yet more annoying and would have retreated underground, where they were less likely to have to listen to him.
Not feeling particularly kind toward any human who robbed me of any chance of a hunt, I let my tail twitch slightly. The cows glanced down and shied away. I slithered out before they decided to quell the noise by stepping on me,
I looked instead at the cowboy's camp. One other man, an older one from the grey of his hair, was trying to tell Jim to shut up before he took his musket to the man's jaw. I'm not sure if he intended to shoot Jim or just crush the jawbone. Either would have been a welcome change.
Jim, of course, paid him no mind. "Why should I?"
"Cuz you're just makin' a fool o' yourself, idiot," the other man told him, rolling his eyes. He appeared, however, to have given up. The female cook took over.
They say the female of the species is more dangerous than the male. . . .
This promised to be fun. I paused on the sunny side of a rock to watch her destroy his ego. As Jim's ego was so inflated it would have taken several hundred miners armed with pickaxes to chip it down to size, this would not be a short argument.
Jim eventually made a comment I immediately recognized as rude toward women, because the other cowboys defended her and she slapped him across the face. I never did mate. . . now you know why.
Jim could hardly keep his dignity after that, and he took to sulking, it is a fairly amusing sight to see a big man pouting as if he's only three years old. As I knew I would do no hunting after the sun completely finished setting because it got too cold, I judged it was not worth starting now and stayed for the rest of the show.
Jim saw me. . . .
"Hey. There's a big ugly rattler o'er here," he commented, looking at me as a suddenly nasty, rotten-toothed grin spread over his face.
I began to coil.
"Leave it alone and it won't hurt you, Jim," the older, grey-bearded cowboy told him. One in a thousand cowboys had sense; he was one of the lucky few. One in a million sane cowboys can make the senseless ones listen; he was not one of those truly blessed ones.
Jim continued closer. "I don't want to leave it alone."
I coiled completely.
The older cowboy shook his head. The female cook was pointedly going to get bandages. The other cowboys were egging Jim on. I wondered absently when I had become an attraction at a circus side show. I rattled my tail- a sure warning sign for him to leave me alone.
Jim did not listen to me, either. . . . He just kept coming closer, grinning stupidly. I stuck my tongue out to clear my eyes with, but I couldn't hiss for further warning. No voice box.
He got within three feet. I raised my head to ready myself for a strike. He didn't take the hint.
Jim grabbed a nearby stick, no doubt to bash my head in in some idiot display of bravery. I rattled my tail at as high a frequency as it went. He was either stupidly brave, or stupidly stupid, the latter of which I find more likely. At any rate, he took one final step closer.
I lunged, and bit into his hand. Jim howled like he was perhaps three years old. While he was raising such a ruckus, I slipped away, and into my hole.
An hour or so later, I crawled cautiously back out. Jim's hand was in bandages, and he was still grumbling about me, a damn devil-snake. Heh heh. Viper was more accurate, but devil-snake is fine.
Jim's ego was probably not taken down a few notches for very long, and I lost a little poison to serpentine curiosity and human stupidity. I hate humans, now you have some idea why. . . . At any rate, the average steer is smarter than Jim, and Jim was not the first idiot cowboy to decide to bash in my head, nor was he the last. He's just one of the most memorable. I do beg you to watch where you put your feet, though. Jim was an idiot, and didn't know any better. I was nice to him.

(Author's note: This is the result of several things, most noticeably the tendency of some bad Westerns to show the cowboy just standing there waiting for the snake to bit him, all merging in one fairly uneventful biology class. . . . Don't ask. Cheers! --- Loki Mischief-Maker)