Another snake.....

I am wondering if I'm going to start counting snakes, the way I counted the scorpions last year. And it was just about this time, all during the month of June, when we kept finding scorpions in the house. Upstairs, downstairs.... at least a dozen of them, which was about eleven too many.

The other night on the front porch, I was standing there while the dog went down the steps and into the grass for her last few minutes outside. She went down the steps..... up the steps..... Gatsby was next to me and we were both watching Gracie. I let Gracie in the door and I was turning around to tell Gatsby what I always tell him at night: See you in the morning, Gatsby-boy. I had just said those words out loud, then I walked in the front door, and as I turned to close the door, I heard a plopping sound on the porch. Gatsby heard it too and we both looked to the left and there was a brown and gold snake right on the porch. I slammed the door shut about the same time Gatsby made a lunge for the snake, which saw him coming..... so the snake catapulted itself off the porch and into the pine bark down below.

I didn't scream..... but I did call up the stairs to my husband..... I have no idea what I said, but I would bet the ranch that the word Snake! was in there at some point. My husband is always at his computer when I find these things. Maybe that's the problem--- I don't spend enough time at my own computer.

Again, my husband asked How big? "About as long as a yardstick, about as big around as a quarter." What color? Green like the last one? "This one was sort of brown or gray, with gold or penny-colored designs on it." My husband checked the Internet for pictures of snakes. He thinks it was a corn-snake, which is docile and non-aggressive. Depending on the pattern, it could have also been a copperhead. Not so docile, can be aggressive.

Either way, it's another snake.... another creature that we don't want around the house, anywhere near the house. Or the garage. Or the cottage. Or the barn. And there it was, on the porch. How it got there, we have no idea. It could have been resting on the porch railing.... it could have been up in the little tree near the porch and it just fell off a branch and landed on the porch. Or maybe it catapulted itself from the tree to the porch just when I was there to see it, in order to establish its superiority.

I have calmed down with the scorpions. I have even killed them by myself, without calling my husband to do it for me. I have swept up the dead ones, giving them a shot of bug-spray just in case (Bengal Gold brand-- don't live in Texas without it). The snakes, however.... a whole different species, a whole other story.

Our handyman Waylon (still working on the insulation under the house) tells us that having an outside cat will keep the snakes at a minimum. And what exactly is minimum? One a day? One a month? Waylon told me that a cat will chase the snake and that old snake will high-tail back into the woods. Which is fine with a non-poisonous snake. I would think that if an aggressive, poisonous snake bites into a cat, the ending isn't going to be a happy one unless the nearest vet's office is close enough and open.

I guess I should be looking on the Internet for pictures of snakes, so I will know what we're dealing with here. A coral snake isn't a good one, and I've already seen a small one out in the yard. It was dead, and cut into a few pieces by the riding mower that the lawn guy uses. When I saw that in the grass, it looked like beads from a necklace..... orange and yellow. I think there was white in it also, but I'm not sure. Orange and yellow is bad, orange and yellow with white isn't that bad, according to the handyman.

I cannot look at snakes in a book, or in a movie, or even on television.... I shut my eyes tight and blindly press the remote till the channel changes. Snakes just give me the creeps, plain and simple. I did look at some of the pictures my husband pulled up on the Internet.... in an attempt to identify the kind of snake that plopped onto the front porch the other night. I was too scared to look too closely that night, though.... and I slammed the door too fast, and Gatsby chased the snake off the porch too fast. If I had to, I wouldn't be able to identify that snake in a line-up.

Rule-of-thumb: just stay away from all snakes. Period. End of discussion. My husband asked me after dinner tonight if I still liked country living. "Sure I do," I told him... "But I can do without the scorpions, the lizards, the snakes, the raccoons, the possums, the skunks, the armadillos, the spiders, the wasps, the hawks, the coyotes, the foxes..... and we haven't even seen a bob-cat yet."

My husband had two words for me: City girl.