Tennessee man finds 6 1/2 foot demon rattlesnake in his backyard

Nashville is one of the coolest cities in America right now, with a combination of country music, killer food, and a rapidly gentrifying culture propelling it up the national like-Austin-but-smaller power rankings. That all came screeching to a halt on Wednesday, however, when a local man from adjacent Cheatham County discovered a SIX-AND-ONE-HALF-FOOT POISONOUS RATTLESNAKE FROM HELL DEVOURING A SQUIRREL IN HIS BACKYARD. Unpack the U-Haul, honey. We aren't setting foot within 500 miles of the Mason-Dixon ever again.

So OK, it's not the greatest the photo in the world, but it's still fairly obvious that A. This is definitely a snake and B. We want absolutely nothing to do it with it. What you can't discern from the shot, presumably sent to WATE 6 from an AOL email address on good ol' fashioned Appalachian dial-up, is that the snake is a timber rattler, an endangered species that you are definitely not allowed to just kill with a shovel without first getting express written consent from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. Therefore Rob Freeman, who discovered Voldemort's pet while playing in the yard with his wife and son, had to first get on the horn with the gov'ment and convince them the animal was an immediate threat to his family before being allowed to dispatch it, hopefully with something slightly more powerful than a shovel (like, idk, a grenade launcher or something).

In equally disconcerting news, Cheatham County fired their animal control officer this week, so for all we know, the entire county could be overrun by giant doom serpents at this very moment. Keep your dial tuned to The Loop for more hard-hitting Tennessee news as this story develops.