My third text message of the day to the wife, on this a special day:

Counted coup x2.

She asked, much later, as we shared dinner from our favorite and famous Mexican restaurant...

"Was that two snakes, or twice with the same one?"

Twice with the same one.

It wasn't the rattlesnake whose tail I touched twice that I was worried about. It gave the merest wave of response after my first caress.

No, the worry was the second rattler, already coiled up in the hole, whose head I could not see.

I predict someday someone will find me lying dead in a field, with two fang marks in my wrist.

And a silly grin on my face.