Not a good day for the mama-bird.

We had a horrible rainstorm last night, complete with thunder and lightning and bits of hail. We truly needed the rain, and our storm was nothing compared to the weather in the rest of the country. Your heart has to go out to the towns that were turned into piles of lumber and bricks by a passing tornado.

My heart also goes out to the mama barn swallow who had her nest at the far corner of our back porch...... the same nest where my husband knocked down a snake the other day who had one of her babies in its mouth. Well, sometime during the night or early this morning, another copperhead got up into that nest. This snake was bigger than the first one that was perched in the nest..... the bulges in the snake's body told us everything we needed to know: all the babies were gone. My husband shot the snake, not once but three times.

The mama bird was circling the nest this morning, but she wasn't screeching or chirping like she was the other day when the smaller snake was in that nest. This snake may have gotten in there during the middle of the night. The three babies were getting bigger and the mama bird had no room for herself in the nest, so she was sleeping on another porch column, close to the nest. Not close enough, however, to protect the babies from a snake. I wouldn't imagine any small bird could chase away a snake.

It's been quiet outside all morning. The birds usually sing all day long. Not today... it's been as quiet as an empty church out there. I was heart-sick this morning. Literally. As soon as I saw the snake hanging out of that nest, I knew what must have happened and I had to run out of the kitchen because I quickly got sick. My husband was right there in the kitchen with me when I looked out the window.... he knew what happened to the baby birds as soon as he saw the snake in the nest. I heard the shots from the bathroom. I knew the snake was history. But so are the baby birds. It's after lunch time as I'm typing.... the mama bird is still circling the back porch and peeking into the nest from time to time.

"Where there's one snake, there's two." Someone who works with my husband told him that just yesterday. Well, in the past four days, there have been three snakes. The smallest was about 16 inches long. The one in the nest this morning was three feet long. The one near the coop the other day was a little over four feet long. Our friends J&J up the road have also been killing snakes... in their yard, on their driveway, in their pool.

I don't like the thought of killing animals. However, I draw the line with the snakes. They are innately evil. They will capture anything that's alive and breathing and helpless. If there is or ever was a god in the heavens, surely a good and loving god would not have fashioned such a creature. I can more easily believe in the presence of a devil, and without a doubt, the heart of a devil beats inside every snake.

Since we've been in this house, I've had to learn how to kill scorpions. I no longer scream for my husband to 'rescue' me from either a live scorpion, a near-to-death scorpion, or a stone-dead one. With the spray that my husband has been using, the scorpions I've found inside the house are so close to death that I just whack them with my shoe and scoop them up with a small dust-pan. I don't even hold the dust-pan at arm's length anymore.

But.... the snakes. I don't know if I could ever kill one. I think I would need a very sharp blade at the end of a very long pole...... and I would need enough strength in my arms to be able to kill the damn thing with one good smash. If you just injure or corner the snake, it's going to get mad and it's going to come after you. That would not be a good thing. You've got to kill it..... you've got to want to kill it... and once you start that process, you've got to follow it through to the bloody end. My husband says you can't just aim for the tail.... you've got to aim for the head.... whether you're using a blade, a shovel, a rake, or a gun.

As I said yesterday...... whose idea was this..... to live in the countryside where the air is unpolluted and there are no traffic jams and the sky lights up with a zillion stars at night and gourmet restaurants are two hours away and billions of wildflowers fill the fields in the Spring and the nearest SteinMart is an hour's drive and the damn copperheads slither up into nests to devour baby birds?!?!?! Damn it all to hell.