Back before the Mighty Muddy crested, while Betsy and I were working to move antiques upstairs in case the levee broke, I was distracted by a constant noise outside one afternoon, across the driveway in the persimmon thicket. I walked to the door to check it out, and it was blue jay noise — that loud, raucous screaming and fussing which jaybirds are known for amongst country homeowners. But these jays were staying in one place, sounded like.

From rural living experience, I knew that blue jays squawking continually in one place probably means one of three things is present: a cat, an owl, or a snake. On the chance that it was the latter, I reached for SouthPow, my left-handed Remington 870 behind the door, pumped a shell into the chamber, and walked into the driveway, looking for the jaybird crowd.

There they were,20 feet up in a tree, flying around, diving at a limb, or lit in the limbs close to their target, which seemed initially to be just a thicker branch, with a blue jay moving on it, flapping but not flying. The birds doing the squawking were all facing that one dancing jay. What was going on?

Then a part of the limb moved beneath the flapping bird, and I realized that it was indeed a snake, that high up in the tree — and the serpent had caught him a jaybird for supper! The supper entree was trying mightily to get away, but the snake was coiling around him, as his friends screamed vile blue jay epithets at the unusually high-up snake.

Now, I am no fan of jaybirds: they’re mean, and will drive a momma bird off of her nest, then attack and kill her offspring therein, including little doves. Yet I am also no fan of snakes, especially those who climb for a living, here at a time when Betsy and I were moving upstairs. I raised SouthPow and tried to dislodge the serpent from the branch with the edge of the pattern, so as to leave its intended victim intact. Not to be: in all the struggling, the blue jay hit the ground first, as the snake — looked like a moccasin, actually — hung onto the limb, though wounded. When I finished it off with a second shot, it died hanging exactly halfway across the limb, and is still up there, two weeks later.

When I took Betsy out to look at it, she commented, “Do you think he knows something we don’t know, about high water coming?”

No, I told her, I have seen one five-foot highland moccasin which was so high up in a pecan tree that Big Robert had to shoot three times straight up with that long-barreled Model 31 Remington he used for squirrel hunting. We figured the serpent was also up there hunting for squirrels. Since a snake lies atop a high branch, I reckon a squirrel might just scamper right into the fangs. However, such a position also protects a snake from a gunshot, unless you prick him enough to make him move and expose a shootable part, which Daddy did.

Then the next week, when I was out strapping down the propane tank to keep it from floating off if the levee broke, that I suddenly heard the jaybirds beginning that same raucous ruckus, under the cedar trees. I stepped to the house, grabbed Southpow again, pumped in a shell, and went to investigate. Sure enough, those jays had a big chicken snake identified as it crawled along the ground, this time. I settled its hash quickly; I normally don’t kill non-poisonous snakes, but a big chicken snake can make you hurt yourself, if you come upon it unexpectedly.

Then I realized: those durn jaybirds were training me, to come shoot their snakes for them!

It’s happened one other time, when I potted a blue runner with a .22 rifle from the upstairs balcony. Then I got another chicken snake by myownself.

Yet I don’t look at it now as them training me to shoot snakes; it’s more like I’ve coached the jaybirds to find snakes out here at Brownspur, and to reveal them unto me for appropriate action. I still don’t like blue jays, but they can be useful.

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Robert Hitt Neill is an outdoors writer. He lives in Leland, Miss.