The snakes...

The snakes...  holy buckets.   I wrote in the last blogpost, that "We've been doing some landscaping (and being introduced to some new snakes!)...".  

That comment, along with a knowledge of my intense fear of snakes (and toads... and salamanders... and frogs... and spiders... and lizards... and turtles...  I think ya'll get what I'm saying!), sparked a few questions for the whole story from some friends of mine.

So after telling the story to one fella at work and emailing it to another, I figured I would turn the email into a post so everyone can laugh at my fears instead of just a select few.

Here ya go: 

So we've got some landscaping projects to do this Spring. We had been working on the front hill that curves around with the side walk from the approach to the garage to our front door.  I'd say we'd been out there a solid 5, maybe even six hours last Saturday.  

Lesley was going inside to get cleaned up so we could go to church on Saturday night and I was going to clean up all of the tools and crap we had out there.  She's standing up within the hill and we're discussing what we're going to do on Sunday when we get back out there.  She says, "Oh my!  It's a snake! A big snake!".  

I'm not exaggerating when I say it was probably 36 - 40 inches long, and fairly meaty!  

Me being the man of the house, and standing roughly 10' away from her, and well, the snake since it was slithering down the hill right next to her, so it obviously wasn't right in the head...  I lost focus.   

So me being the man, I start shouting, "Waddu-i-do? Waddu-i-do?" as it's coming my direction, you see.  

She says, "It's cold blooded so I have to take care of it", meaning that I take care of warm blooded animals and she takes care of the cold blooded.  Being a week removed from this trauma, I now get that.  However, I interpreted that in the heat of the moment to mean that it was a cold blooded killer and something HAD to be done, which is EXACTLY what I was thinking!  


She goes and gets the spade and I kid you not, when it saw her coming, it leapt, or lunged I suppose.  

Scared me bad...  REAL bad.  

So she continues the approach and take a stab at it and misses the first time. Now he's mad!  She takes a second stab and I'm thinking that due to the shape of the spade, she hit it, but it wasn't dead.  About six inches of the snake, including it's head, was sticking up and waving back and forth frantically wagging it's vicious little tongue in the process.  

She says, "Oh boy, he's really mad now!  Waddu-i-do? Waddu-i-do?".  

I grabbed the other shovel, the short handled shovel by the way, and headed over there to rescue my damsel in distress, since I was fairly confident that she had him safely pinned to the terra firma.  

I'm aiming at this wildly flailing killer just behind the head because I want one good, kill shot.  I rear back with the shovel, the short handled one, and thrust it downward with enough force to split 12" boulder cleanly in half.  I expected to see the snakes head fall, in slow motion,  lifelessly to the ground, but what we witnessed instead was a scene that would make a horror movie producer blush, and possibly even vomit.  


My shovel managed to enter the snake almost exactly where I had intended for the fatal blow to fall, however with his flailing, the blade of the shovel scraped along his "backbone" for about 5 or 6 inches, effectively skinning half of him for that distance.  

Blood is spilling, he's slowing down, I have an adrenalin rush that would rival any in history and on top of that, I feel bad.  

So, he eventually bleeds out leaving a bloodstain on the dirt, I'm not kidding. 

Lesley goes to pick him up with the steel rake and he moves!  What?!?  How can this be?  Apparently, he's not quite dead yet.  She eventually gets the body wrapped around several of the rakes tines and carries it down to the creek.  

We both settle down and she goes in to take her shower as she had planned prior to this incident.  So there I am, out there all alone, nervous as I've ever been, cleaning up tools n' such.  

That's when I spot the second one. It's smaller but it's in the exact spot that we killed what I now presume to be it's momma. This one is probably 16-18 inches long and thinner, but no doubt a cold blooded killer too.  

I go and grab the shovel, the short handled one, and head over to beast #2 so we can square off like men and determine who will emerge victorious.  

Thankfully, this one is much calmer so my approach was a little less dramatic as well.  The situation called for it.  

I rear back again with the shovel and suddenly find myself in total freak-out mode.  I stabbed it down at him with a ferocity that would have frightened the devil himself.  

Three times.  

I had too.  

You see, even though he wasn't moving much, my blind rage towards him caused me to miss the first two times.  Third time lucky though.  I severed the head about 3 inches back.  To my horror, both sides kept moving!!!  

I backed up and watched from a little safer distance.  Plus, I had no idea how many more "children" might be coming out of the den soon!  

After about 5 minutes, I went back with the steel rake and picked up the body... only it's still moving...  man!  I pick it up and get about ten feet towards the creek before it slithers off the rake again.  Pick it up, go a few more feet, snake slithers off again.  I consider if I should try to throw it off of the rake with some type of fancy spinning move but after careful, deep consideration, I decided that a move like that is simply too risky. If my fancy spin move were to go awry and the snake carcass would somehow come back at me and touch me, I would surely perish.  

So pick it back up again, go a little further, drop it, repeat.  This happens many more times before I finally make it to the creek.  

You would think the story would end here, but sadly, it does not.  

I turn the rake over, tines side down so the snake can just fall off into the tall grasses/weeds that we don't mow.  Only it WON'T FALL OFF NOW!!!  

I start to panic a bit and it was in that panic that the fancy spinning move began to sound more palatable than it had previously.  I only did about a 180 degree spin, just wanted a little momentum but not too much!  

The snake flew off the rake... about 3 inches and the tail wrapped around a branch of a 6' tall tree sapling.  So now it's hanging from the tree.  I just stood there looking at it like, "you've got to be kidding me!!", when it slithered off and fell, only to get hooked on a lower tree branch.  When it started moving off of that branch, I figured it was seeking it's last attempt to avenge it's mother's blood.  I took off for the house like a man possessed.  

Lesley picked up the head the next morning and did away with it.

The End.