I don’t know if it was capturing Big Mama that made Joe feel good, or if it was growing confidence in the structural integrity of the biplane, but Joe decided to have some fun with Irwin for scaring him with the buzzer. He peeled off and dived for the neck of the canyon, the airspeed turning clear up to 150, which must have been red line speed if it had such a thing. He headed for a narrow part of the canyon, narrower than their wingspan, rolled it vertical at the last second and flew that way until the canyon widened out, finally hedge hopping among the cedar trees. Where the canyon made an “l” he pulled it up into one of his wild chandelles then headed back and did it all over again. By that time Irwin was yelling at Joe to stop and let him out, so Joe pointed her nose for Okeene. I’ve taken that canyon flight with Joe and I can tell you it’s a wild one!

About a mile from town, Joe felt something cold brush against his ankle. At first he thought Irwin had tickled his ankle with the snake snare, so he stuck his head under the instrument panel for a better look. What he got was a close eyeball-to-eyeball look at Big Mama slithering out of the sack and crawling toward him. Joe froze dead still. too scared to move. He said it was the first time he ever thought of parachuting without a parachute. Joe has never figured just why the sack came untied but feels maybe it was the bouncing around while he was giving Irwin the aerobatic treatment. But now Big Mama was big trouble, because if she’ hit Joe then he never could have gotten the plane down. It would have undoubtedly crashed and killed them both. As it turned out, they almost did anyway, but I’m getting ahead of the story.

There Joe was, with his feet stretched out onto the rudder pedals, wondering what to do but trying to avoid any quick moves that would cause Big Mama to strike. He looked under the panel again and this time got a bigger scare. The ten smaller rattlers were trying to get out of the sack at once and looked like a mass of big slithering, intertwined spaghetti. Now he had eleven snakes to contend with, not just one. Joe said he could just imagine them, crawling all over him, and the cold sweat began again.

All this time, which seemed longer to Joe than it really was, Irwin sat in the front pit, oblivious to what was happening in the back pit. Joe yelled at Irwin but couldn’t make himself heard over the engine noise then finally he cut the throttle and screamed, “the snakes are out of the sack!” At that precise instant one of the rattlers slithered across Irwin’s leg so he got the message in a sudden, blinding flash.

Irwin yelled bloody-murder, unbuckled his belt and jumped up out of his seat. The next thing Joe knew, Irwin was climbing out on the wing walk. Joe was afraid he might be hysterical and do something foolish like jumping, but it was just a matter of abdicating the front throne to the snakes who now occupied it. Meanwhile, Big Mama moved closer to Joe and looked like she was going to climb into his lap. Joe decided it was time to move, so he jumped up half way out of the cockpit. With Joe no longer holding the stick and with the plane wing-heavy from Irwin standing out on the walk, they promptly went into a screaming spiral dive from 1200 feet altitude. Suddenly, they were looking at the ground coming up in a big hurry, so Joe sat down again and grabbed for the stick.

He made an awkward pass at it and the stick broke off part way down, lacerating Joe’s fingers. Then he made a do-or-die grab at what was left of the stick and yanked back for all he was worth. The biplane came out of the dive only 50 feet or so above the ground-another second and they would have splattered people, plane and rattle. snakes all over Okeene, Oklahoma. Joe was so busy breathing a big sigh of relief that he almost forgot about the rattlers. This time when he looked down, he found rattlers all around him, tangled like a mass of spaghetti.

Irwin meanwhile had found his camera tripod and was flailing at the snakes and yelling like a Banshee. You could have heard him five miles away. At first all he succeeded in doing was knocking out one side of the front cockpit, the stringers and fabric flying into the slipstream. The homemade seat upholstery was stuffed with cotton and pretty soon this was also flying past Joe’s head. At that point Irwin hadn’t done any damage to the snakes yet.

With the plane level again, Big Mama started once more to crawl towards Joe, this time coiling wickedly in preparation for striking, Joe pulled his feet back and raised them up just in time; Big Mama struck where his leg had been seconds before. She pulled back” ready to strike again and Joe thought he’d had it! This time, Big Mama could hardly miss but Joe’s reflexes came to his rescue with one of those instinctive moves that after. wards you don’t even remember doing. He pushed the stick forward, put the plane in a momentary dive and the slanting angle of the floorboards sent Big Mama sliding all the way to the firewall, forward of the front pit.

This put her in range of Irwin’s tripod and gave him a target he couldn’t miss. Using the sharp pointed ends he stabbed and jabbed away at her until he did her in, then went flailing away at the smaller ones with increased confidence, doing as much damage to the cushions and plane as the snakes. After he had dispatched several of them with the tripod he found he could use the legs like a long pair of tongs, so he picked up his victims and threw them overboard. He didn’t toss one far enough and it went flying right back at Joe. He ducked just in time and the rattler hit the rudder, nearly taking it off. Irwin stood on the wing walk, holding on as best he could, bashing the snakes and throwing them out, until finally he couldn’t find any more. They knew there ware a few left, but figured they had crawled under the floorboards.

Meanwhile down on the ground, curious citizens of Okeene had been watching the air circus and the mysterious rain of rattlesnakes. They wondered why one of the passengers was standing out on the wing, but no amount of persuasion by Joe would induce Irwin to climb back in. Joe could tell by the look on Irwin’s face he’d never ride in a plane again. So when Joe finally sat the old crate down at the airport there was quite a reception committee-it wasn’t every day Okeene gets so much excitement! Irwin hit the ground running about the same instant the biplane did, he wanted no further part of it.

When Joe told some of his snake-hunting buddies what had happened up there the story soon spread far and wide. Everyone thought it was the funniest thing that had ever happened in Okeene-everybody, that is, except Joe and Irwin.

Go thru Okeene today and ask any old-timers about the day it rained rattlesnakes.