A workman on a road construction crew told this story of a time when he was working on a project deep in the mountain area of Pennsylvania. Every morning as he drove to work in his pickup, he would see a young boy at a fishing hole near the road. He would wave and speak to the boy each day. One day, however, as he drove slowly past the fishing spot and asked how the boy was doing, he got a strange reply: “The fish aren’t bitin’ today, but the worms sure are.”

When he pulled into the local gas station down the road a few minutes later, he jokingly related the boy’s comment to the attendant. For a moment the man laughed, but then a look of horror crossed his face, and without another word he ran to his truck, jumped in, and drove hurriedly away.

Later that day, the man on the construction crew found out what had happened. The gas station attendant had arrived on the scene too late to save the boy, who had somehow mistaken a nest of baby rattlesnakes for earthworms and had been bitten to death.

Baby rattlesnakes, you see, are born with their full venom. And so it is with many of the sins that tempt us. They may appear harmless, even colorful, yet they contain the full venom of Satan’s poison and will destroy us if we handle them.

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Note: There are various versions of this story but all are doubtful. The only thing real in this story is that baby rattlesnakes can kill a human being.