scijessreads

“Ouch!” I snap my hand to my mouth and suck at the pinpricks of blood starting to form ruby drops on my fingertips. “Damn thorns.”

“Of course there are thorns,” Ella rolls her eyes and gingerly pokes her own fingers through the mass of tangles. “It’s a blackberry bush. They have them. Or did you forget?” Her tiny fingers tug gently at the dark black berry, freeing it from the branch and dropping it onto her tongue with a smirk. 

“Oh, shut up,” I mumble, still sucking on my fingers. 

“Ooooh, burn.” Ella tugs at another berry and hands it to me. A conciliatory gesture, even though she’s still grinning at my misfortune. 

We both move down a few inches, shuffling along the wall of leaves and thorns, searching for the next cluster of ripe, dark fruits among all of the still-red berries that surround us. Blackberry picking is a season-long process, collecting the newly-ripened berries and leaving the others to come back for on another day. I mean, how else would you want to spend summers? Our ritual of searching out every blackberry bush we can find, eating most of them, and then managing to remember to put a few in the bucket we share to take back home to my mom so she can make cobbler is at this point a staple of our days off from school. 

For the next hour we methodically move down the bushes lining this little-used trail. Over the last couple years Ella and I have mapped out where all the best blackberry bushes are located in the foothills we live in. Tucked in the valley between the low-lying mountains are rolling hills with a collection of twisting paths and well-worm trails leading to anywhere and nowhere. We spent our days wandering all of them, weaving in and out of streams and over pretty much ever rock and boulder. Next to berry picking, rock hopping was our next best favorite thing to do when school was a distant memory and the baking heat of summer was all that we knew. 

“Do you think we should stay on this trail, or move to the smaller bushes by the creek?” The methodical grasp, twist, pull of collecting berries a steady rhythm between us. By working in tandem, we could clear out a bunch of berries in record time. Granted, we snacked on way more than ended up in the bucket, but that was just the way things worked for us. Cobbler was great, but neither Ella nor I had great patience. The instant gratification of a fresh, slightly warm berry bursting juice across the tongue made it easy to forget that fresh, homemade cobbler covered in melting vanilla ice cream was even a possibility. 

This is what my mom got for leaving the heavy lifting to a 10 and 8 year old. A 100% chance of losing 75% of your blackberry harvest to sticky fingers that ended up covered in splotches of purple and tiny puncture wounds. 

Ella turned, a berry clasped in her teeth. “Nah. Let’s finish up this stretch and then go splash in the creek before having to walk up the awful hill back home.” 

Nodding, I turned back to the bush, about to reach in again for another cluster of delicious treasure toward the low-lying branches on the ground when I glanced in front of my hand and froze. Curled up, right next to where my hand was about to capture the next harvest, was a tiny snake. 

I hate snakes. Call me Indiana Jones, but I really hate snakes. 

“Ummm, Ella” I whispered, trying to get her attention while not startling what I was pretty sure was a baby rattlesnake. I glanced to the side. My best friend was oblivious, turned to the side and humming as she kept plucking fruit from what was now a very dangerous balckberry bush. 

“Ella. Stop. Moving. Around,” I got out, trying not to yell but not quite managing a whisper anymore. She turned and began to walk closer. 

“No! Stop! There’s a snake right in front of me.” I talked out of the side of my mouth, afraid to turn away lest the venomous baby horror in front of me decide to strike the moment I lost eye contact. Do snakes even make eye contact? Because it sure felt like this little one was. 

“What? Ohmygodwhatarewegoingtodo?” All the words rushed out of Ella in one ragged breath as she followed my gaze and her eyes went owl-wide. If I hated snakes, Ella LOATHED them. You would think two girls that grew up in the mountains would be OK with wildlife, but we both drew the line at slithery reptiles, scorpions, and giant tarantulas. All of which we had had various less-than-pleasant encounters with in our relatively short lives. 

Being a whole 2 years older, I felt like I should know how to get out of this situation. But I had no clue. No sudden movement is all that came to mind. I nudged Ella with my shoulder, and started walking backwards down the trail, back in the direction we had been coming from. She quickly got the idea, shuffling as fast as we dared while still staring at the snake nestled at the base of the bush we had just been plundering. Was this some sort of karmic retribution for taking all the berries we could eat and carry? Because this damn blackberry bush had apparently decided to take on some security in the form of a small reptilian guard. 

Once we were far enough away that the snake couldn’t jump out and catch us, we turned and sprinted down the trail as fast as we could manage. Jumping over roots and rocks, trying not to trip over one another as we spilled from the trail back onto the sticky asphalt of the parking lot. Gulping in lungfuls of air, I doubled over and put my hands on my knees. Ella dropped our bucket to the ground and stood there, shaking her head, eyes still abnormally wide.

“What the hell?! That was the scariest thing ever, even more than the time that scorpion fell out of my blanket!” Ella shrieked. Luckily, no one else was in earshot of that revelation. I shuddered at the thought, as I had been in the room the day that incident happened. Ugh. Not fun. 

“Totally. I don’t want to be outside anymore” I shuddered. “Let’s see if we managed to snag enough berries for mom to make something with. Or add to the freezer stash to make something with.”

Picking up the handle of the bucket, Ella started swinging it around as we crossed the parking lot and headed to the path that would take us up the steep hill to our houses. It always felt like I was walking up a vertical wall when we took this path, but it was the fastest way to get home. Walking the side of the road back took twice as long. The entire walk back was us just muttering the words “that was so scary” and “oh my god” back and forth. 

Once our houses came into view, we sprinted for my back door. “Mom! Guess what?”

My mom turned to see us spill through the doorway in a mess of flailing limbs and shouted, overlapping words. “We were picking blackberries and we saw a baby rattlesnake!”

She raised one dark eyebrow at us. “Really? Where?”

“Right next to where I was about to reach for some berries.”

“It was scary! We ran so fast to get away” Ella added. 

Mom’s eyes widened a fraction. She brought her hands out of the sink full of soapy water and dishes, wiping them on a towel and turning to us fully. “I’m glad you two are OK. Baby rattlers are not something you want to mess with. Sounds like it was a close one.”

“It so was,” I replied, nodding my head so fast it felt like I could give myself whiplash. 

“But we saved the berries!” Ella chimed in. She stuck out the hand holding the bucket of prized dark purple jewels we managed to liberate before the snake interrupted our plans. My mom reached out to grab it and peered inside. 

“And how many did you two eat before you started collecting them for me?” A small smile started at her lips. She knew us too well. 

“Ummm, a few…” Ella and I started at the same time. We tried looking innocent, but mom’s head shake and laugh had us realizing she knew we had eaten way more than a few. 

“Well, this still looks like enough to bake with. Wash up and you can come help me. Surviving a snake encounter deserves a treat.” 

I grinned at Ella as we turned to the bathroom. “Let’s watch Indiana Jones tonight.” She frowned. 

“I’ve had enough snakes for today, thank you. How about something else?”