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    We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes
    We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes
    We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes

    By Patrick Jennings

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Crusher the snake will charm readers in this entertaining, funny novel about a snake in captivity and how she turns the tables on her human captor.

    I am a snake.

    No, not a rattlesnake. I just look like one. I’m a gopher snake.

    One day an oily, filthy, fleshy human child crossed my path. As luck would have it, he knew the difference between a gopher snake and a rattlesnake. He has imprisoned me in a terrarium. His name is Gunnar. He calls me Crusher. He thinks I’m male. I’m not.

    He dropped in a dead mouse and hoped I’d eat it. I buried it. He then dropped in a live one, which he called “Breakfast.” I didn’t lay a coil on it.

    Gunnar thinks I’ll be his adoring pet. He’s wrong.

    In fact, I am planning my escape. I may take breakfast with me.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 6, 2009
    ISBN9780061985676
    We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes
    Author

    Patrick Jennings

    Patrick Jennings grew up in a small town in Indiana, where there were no wild, lethally venomous snakes. His family then moved to rural Arizona, where lived many, including seventeen varieties of rattlesnake. Patrick got seriously freaked out. He now lives on the Olympic Peninsula, where there are scarcely any wild, lethally venomous snakes. We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes is his fourteenth book for young readers.

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    Reviews for We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes

    4/5

    39 ratings8 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Lots of messages going out to the reader. Also lots to think and talk about. I didn't like this book at first but I ended up being impressed.
    • 3/5
      Gunner, a young boy, is the new proud owner of a gopher snake. It is this snake who narrates the story through a first-person account of how the boy finds the snake in the wild, brings him home, and keeps him in a terrarium. I like this beginning reader book because the plot is interesting and the characters are dynamic. Madame Snake befriends Breakfast, a rat, and Gunner becomes more sensitive to his pets' needs.

      There's been some talk about the importance of finding classroom books that appeal to boys. This might be that kind of book because Gunner and his friends are likable (believable) characters who do normal things like play video games and complain about school. Gunner also gets into plenty of mischief. This type of action might interest all of the class, particularly the boys.
    • 5/5
      Such a funny way of reading a book. Coming form the point of view of a snake is a great way for a kid to engage into the story. I love the ideas that reptiles can also communicate telepathically with each other. I also loved the descriptions Crusher gave of the boys and Gunner.
      I look back and can see myself doing the exact same things that Gunner did. Guess when you grow up in the country thats just what little boys do. I think this book is one that can be read by middle age boys, but also by young parents of boys. That way they can really look back and laugh at the fact that they could have been Gunner!
    • 4/5
      I loved that the two main characters completely contrasted with each other, also share a major commonality. Gunnar is a child who's parents are somewhat negligent to him, just how Gunnar doesn't take proper care for his animals. Both the animals (Crusher included) and Gunnar needs people who love and care for them.
      In this story, a gopher snake gets taken by a young boy named Gunnar. Gunnar names this snake, Crusher, and mistakes Crusher for a boy (she's really a female). Crusher gets thrown into a tank with a turtle, lizard, and a tarantula. Crusher ends up becoming friends with a mouse that Gunnar calls "breakfast". Gunnar is a boy who is cruel and negligent to the animals he captures and because of this many have died due to starvation; If they die, Gunnars parents have him dispose of them by emptying them outside his window. Crusher soon starts to plot for her escape. At one point Crusher gets Gunnar to hold her, convincing him that she is tame, just so she can look for a way out. At the end of the book, Gunnar ends up releasing Crusher and the other animals and replaces Crusher with a new snake. Crusher sneaks "Breakfast" on their escape with her by putting her "Breakfast" in her mouth.
    • 2/5
      Book was okay. Did address the problem of children playing video games for too long and the problem of capturing and keeping wild animals as pets (in this case snakes, tarantulas, lizards and turtles). Told from the point of view of the snake.
    • 5/5
      Crusher is NOT a pet. She is not even a male snake. But Gunnar, her fleshy human captor, knows otherwise. She is determined that she will escape, but the more time she spends in Gunnar's terrarium prison, the less optimistic she feels. Will she have to become a PET in order to gain her freedom? And if she does, what will she do about her new friends? Can she leave them behind?
    • 4/5
      Told from the point of view of a gopher snake who is captured by a boy who collects various wild critters he finds and keeps them imprisoned in cages in his room. The boy is a pretty unlikeable character, who loves to play video games all day. When he loses a game at one point, he destroys his video game console, and is given a new one a short while later by his indulgent parents.

      The boy quickly loses interest in his newest acquisition when the snake refuses to eat. The snake is able to communicate with the other animals kept in the room though, and learns that others have died from neglect. When the lizard, Rex, dies from lack of food, the snake realizes that she will suffer the same fate unless she is able to escape.
    • 4/5
      When our protagonist, the gopher snake, is captured by a human boy and put in a cage, all she can think of is escape. But after studying the habits of boys for awhile and getting to know her mouse companion (whom she affectionately names Breakfast), will Crusher change her mind?

      Funny and weird, this book is definitely something different. Crusher's observations on human habits are witty and Gunnar's treatment of his pets will definitely make kids think twice about catching wild animals.

    Book preview

    We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes - Patrick Jennings

    CHAPTER 1

    CALL ME CRUSHER

    I had shed a skin the day of my capture. As always, the sloughing left me famished, so I curled up under a shady patch of creosote and eagerly awaited the first rodent to cross my path. Gopher was at the top of my list, though I was so hungry that I’d gladly have settled for even a nasty, gristly little shrew.

    A rodent did not cross my path first that morning, however. A lower life form did: a human.

    Humans are not difficult to detect. Their footfalls are thunderous. My best hope was to freeze and hope my camouflage would conceal me. The chances of this were good, human senses being so dull.

    The creature approached. It was an oily, filthy, fleshy human child. It leaned forward, squinting with malicious eyes.

    I was familiar with humans at this point only from afar, but even from there, I found them a pitiable species: scaleless, fangless, clawless, nearly furless, wingless, venomless, witless. I honestly didn’t understand how they had thrived so.

    This particular specimen was notably on the plump side. Its face and limbs boasted a collection of bruises, scrapes, and scabs. Its splotchy pale skin, pink from the sun, showed beginnings of a slough of its own.

    Cool! the kid whispered to itself. Rattler!

    How I wished it were true. One well-aimed shot of venom and this story would have ended on the spot.

    Humans often mistake gopher snakes for rattlesnakes, which is reasonable, considering that we happen to be dead ringers for them. This is a good thing when the naive human runs away screaming. It’s a bad thing when the human beats the gopher snake to a pulp with a stick. That’s when the expression dead ringer becomes only too apt.

    I stopped playing dead and started playing rattlesnake. I shook my tail. Rattlers aren’t the only ones who do this; they’re merely the most flamboyant about it. Technically, a rattlesnake’s tail doesn’t even rattle. It buzzes. My tail rattles. I also started hissing my nastiest hiss. We gopher snakes hiss with the best of them.

    The dumb kid moved in still closer.

    "Nope, you’re a gopher snake," it said.

    I had to give it credit. That observation alone probably put it among the greatest minds of its species. Just my luck.

    I redoubled my rattling and coiled up into an S. I may not be a rattler, but that doesn’t mean I’m an invertebrate or something. I’m big, strong, and mean—and, though not deadly to humans, my bite doesn’t exactly tickle.

    Apparently I got this across. The kid turned and walked away. Alas, it returned a moment later brandishing a club of some kind.

    The time had come to abandon playacting. It was time to flee. Fleeing is not something I excel at. We gopher snakes are the snails of the snake world.

    The kid made a grab for me with a pudgy paw. I snapped at it, missing by only a hairsbreadth.

    That’s not very nice, the kid said, stepping back, a smirk on its sweaty face.

    Humans give me the creeps. They are so slimy.

    I inched away. Forget being a rattlesnake. What I wished to be right then was a hare.

    The kid dragged the end of the club through the dirt, slid it under my belly, and hoisted me off the ground. A snake has no greater fear than that of falling. It’s the lack of limbs. We can do nothing to prevent ourselves from flopping onto our ribs, and a snake is nothing but ribs.

    The kid took advantage of my wooziness and gripped me behind the jaws with its finger and thumb. I wrapped my coils around its arm and squeezed. I hissed as I had never hissed before. I nearly scared myself.

    You got a good grip there, the kid said. Think I’ll call you Crusher.

    I gave the kid points for knowing I was a constrictor, but I docked it some points for laboring under the common misconception that constrictors crush. We don’t. We asphyxiate. We tighten around our victims until they can no longer draw a breath. Then we swallow them. Whole.

    I was trying neither to crush nor to asphyxiate the human. I’m not dense. The kid was huge, not to mention unsavory. I was just holding on for dear life.

    Come on, Crusher, it said, grinning. Come see your new home.

    As if I had any say in the matter.

    CHAPTER 2

    SPEEDY

    I had never been inside a human den before. It is well known in the desert that those who enter one rarely return to tell the tale.

    The kid’s den was a big white box inside a bigger white box. My fellow prisoners and I were kept individually in small glass boxes with wire mesh roofs and dirt floors. I shared my cell with a small dish of water and the mesquite branch the kid had used to capture me. The prisoners in the other boxes were a tarantula, a desert tortoise, and an alligator lizard.

    As reptiles, the tortoise and the lizard could have sent me messages telepathically, but they didn’t. Nor did they answer the messages I sent, such as What does the kid plan to do with us? and What’s with all the boxes? They didn’t stir. Perhaps they were hibernating. Or dead.

    They weren’t dead, or hibernating. They were ignoring me. This I learned when the kid appeared with food and they slowly came to life. The kid deposited insects in the tarantula’s box, grubs and worms in the lizard’s, and various blackish greens in the tortoise’s. I tried again to communicate with the reptiles as they ate, but again, they didn’t respond. Were they snubbing me? True, snakes eat tortoise eggs and lizards, but was that an excuse for rudeness?

    The kid approached me, holding a dead white mouse by the tail. I pressed up to the metal screen, hissing menacingly, daring the kid to open it. It’s one thing to scoop up a snake with a stick, another to approach an angry, cornered one. The kid didn’t open the lid.

    Go ahead and starve, it said. See if I care.

    I was already starving but knew I could go longer without food, for weeks if need be. I wondered

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