By Dr. Thomas Cloer, Jr.

Special to The Courier

There is something about venomous snakes that makes almost everyone shudder. I have never been able to pinpoint what that variable is. Is it because of the Genesis story in the Bible, or the fact that pain and death are possibly so close? I only know that I, personally, still have that feeling, especially when a rattlesnake is involved.

Encounters with Rattlers on Stinking Creek

In 1959, my dad announced that the big steam sawmill that the Cloers operated would be leaving the North Georgia mountains, which my brother, Nat, and I had known as home throughout the 1950s. We were moving to the high East Tennessee mountains and a place called Stinking Creek. The creek had been named after a horrifically cold winter in the late 1700s, when the livestock had all died and frozen along the creek. The spring thaw then

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