Snake & Run

It's the summer of snakes. And no, for once I am not referring to our political world.  I'm talking about real honest-to-goodness snakes, those slithering creatures that show up in the most unexpected places.

Earlier in the summer, we were enjoying our screened in porch, for the first time in a very long time. The weather was just right for it, and we both had good books to read.  We propped the screen door open, so our dogs could go in and out.  It was a lovely time.  At least, in the beginning.

As we were wrapping it up, Alison discovered, to her horror, that we had an unexpected visitor with us - a snake, snaked around a box of kindling wood, right there on the screened porch with us.  She observed this, with colorful language, behind a door in our house, one with the view of our new guest.  I went out to see if I could identify it, and if it was even alive.

It was alive.  It undulated slowly over a log.  I took pictures and asked social media if they could help me identify it.  Alison noted that it had diamond shapes on its skin, and a triangle shaped head. And poisonous or not, we had small, older dogs who could have a heart attack just trying to chase the thing.

Social media was not responding back, and the snake started to move, to head towards a cabinet where it would be relatively unreachable.  So I took matters into my own hands.  Well, hands wielding a shovel.

After I had removed pieces of the snake, tossing them into a wooded area behind our house, social media finally kicked in that it was a harmless rat snake.  I felt like a stone clod killer.

And then last week, Alison and her mother, Rose, went on an antiquing trio to celebrate Rose's birthday.  Little did they know they had picked up an unexpected passenger.  As they were traveling towards Baxley, something stared at them from, peering up from the hood near the passenger window wiper.  It was the eyes of a snake, that had somehow found its way under the hood of Rose's car!

After considerable screaming and fright, they pulled into a gas station.  The snake came out onto the wiper blade.  It was bigger and meaner looking than the rat snake that was on our porch.  It started to slither its way towards Rose's passenger door.  More screaming ensued.

Another patron at the gas station, thought it might be a ground rattler.  Others thought a rat or oak snake.  Regardless, further investigation was halted as someone knocked it off the car.  Alison decided to get out of Dodge, running over the snake in the process of peeling out.  They did not stay to see if the snake was dead, or if other patrons were threatened.  It was a snake & run, and they were already blasting up the highway to jitterly begin their antique quest.

Many who heard these stories told us the old saying, "The only good snake is  snake that quietly does it job out of sight." Well, that's not quite what they said, but close enough.  I know they perform an important function - going after pests like mice, rats, moles, Yorkies.  Okay, that last one is not so good.

We're trying to shake these incidents off, but now we hear about snakes all the time.  They're stories and pictures on our social media, many of our TV programs feature snakes, they're in our dreams, and they're even in the White House.  Oops!  Sorry about that last one.  I said I wasn't going to get political.

Oh, well.  My bad.