Why did the snake cross the road?

To get to the other side, of course....

We all have snakes on the brain these days.  Being that the pastures are filled with waist-high grass and wildflowers (soon to be cut down for hay) the snakes have many places to hide.  Yesterday while we were doing our morning walk, I told J and J about Scarlett and the fake egg and the snake that was in the chicken coop.  After our walk, I was in the house and JS had just said good-bye and continued on up the hill towards her house..... and I heard the door bell ringing..... and it was J--- she told me that there was a huge snake in the middle of the road, up past our barn. (This all sounds so calm. Trust me--- we're not calm when we're talking about snakes. Even when we see car-flattened baby snakes in the roadway, we're tip-toeing past them as we walk.)

So there was yet another snake in the middle of the road.... right where she had to walk to get past our property and on up to hers.  Who in their right mind would walk past such a large snake? So of course J turned around and walked back to our house. (She might have been running, come to think of it.)  I opened up the kitchen door and all I heard was "Huge snake. Middle of the road. Up there by the barn."  My husband was just coming down the stairs at that moment, and I repeated some of the same words J had said: "Snake. In the road. The barn."  He grabbed the rifle, grabbed the bullets, and out we all went.

I walked with them as far the end of our driveway.  Did I want to go further and see another big snake? After seeing the huge snake that killed Scarlett just the day before?  I looked down at my feet. I was wearing my flat-heeled ballerina-type shoes that I just wear in the house. Not exactly snake-sighting shoes. (Plus, with snakes, any excuse for keeping my distance will do.)  As I stopped in my ballerina shoes at the end of the driveway, my husband put the rifle over his shoulder and started to whistle the theme song from "Bridge Over the River Kwai" and off they went.

I never did hear a shot fired.... the snake apparently did cross the road (he had been heading towards our side of the road, of course, when JS saw him)..... and heaven only knows where he went. Needless to say, I was overly cautious when I went into the coop yesterday. 

I didn't really expect Audrey or PittyPat to lay eggs yesterday, after what happened to Scarlett the day before, but PittyPat did lay an egg in the afternoon.  She usually lays her eggs in the bottom right nesting box,  next to the nesting box where Scarlett had been sitting on her fake egg.  PittyPat chose the upper left box for her egg-laying yesterday.  There's no doubt that both PittyPat and Audrey were witnesses to the snake-biting of Scarlett, so I guess the higher nesting boxes are going to be the favorite egg-laying spots for the last two hens.

The last two hens. No more chickens after these last two are gone. The thrill of finding fresh just-laid eggs out in the coop has long been replaced by a fear of egg-hunting snakes and chicken-hunting coyotes and hawks. Fresh eggs definitely taste better, but does it really matter? All I know is this.... it's taking me too damn long to walk into the coop these days--- my eyes search every corner, every plank, every inch of that coop before I set foot into it.  And then I have to turn around and check the nesting boxes, hoping and praying there isn't a snake between me and the gate of the coop.           

Who was it that said country life is serene and quiet? Chicken feathers to that.