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Sunday, June 12, 2011

Heebie Jeebies

Yesterday started like any other day.  The girls played happily together, I spent some time looking around pinterest, and the weather had finally cooled down a little bit so we all weren’t miserable.  All in all, a good day!  I had dinner about ready to go in the oven, Sadie was still napping and Hannah was playing independently so I grabbed a cookbook and sat down at the kitchen table to try to do a little meal planning for this week. 

Meal planning didn’t get done.

Why?  Because no sooner had I opened the cookbook, I looked up and saw this staring at me through the kitchen window.

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Those of you who know me well, know that I am TERRIFIED of snakes.  I can handle stink bugs, spiders, ants and even mice.  But snakes?  Not so much.  So…what to do, what to do?  Kyle was at work so I called him to let him know that there was a four foot long snake on our patio.  He thought that I must have been in such a state of terror that I was surely exaggerating the size of this snake.  He told me to take some pictures of it and send them to him.  So I e-mailed him this:

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That pretty much convinced him that I was not exaggerating.  I didn’t want to let the snake out of my sight because the last thing I needed was a loose snake crawling somewhere outside my house.  Kyle’s ideas included:

1. Get a golf club and let the snake get on that then take it out to the grass and run over it with the tractor. 

2. Use a broom and corral it away from the house and then beat it with a golf club.

3. Go get the neighbor. 

Not wanting to go all the way to the garage to get a golf club, I took the pole off the back of Hannah’s bike (the one that you use to push the bike from behind).  Just as I got it off, the snake slithered into a little gap between the foundation of our house and the siding. 

Great.  Now the snake was surely going to come into my house.  By this time, my heart was racing and my anxiety level was rising greatly.  I called Kyle back and his ideas included:

1. Send Lhotse into the cellar and tell her she can’t come out until she has killed a snake.

2. Go get the neighbor.

Because I like my dog, I decided to go with idea #2.  However, just as I was heading over there I saw them pull away in their car.  Great.  On to the next plan.  I  got a flashlight and went down to the cellar.  I didn’t actually go in, but I turned on the light and shined my flashlight around but I didn’t see anything. 

At this point I had tried to call my parents about 17 times and no one answered…all 17 times.  You would think I would have stopped trying at call #5, but no. 

So, I called my sister.  She reassured me that the snake would not, in fact, eat my children and that it would come out to sun itself soon. 

I called Kyle back and he said, “Just go do something else.  Don’t think about it.  It will leave soon because it will get too hot in there.” 

Easy for him to say.  I began to cry a little on the phone and had chills all over my body.  I am not a dramatic person at all, so this lets you know just how much I hate snakes! 

I decided to go on with the day, finish up dinner and put the girls to bed.  As I was making dinner I looked out and saw the snake’s head sticking out of the hole that it went in.  I went out to the garage and got the tractor, a broom and a pick mattock similar to this one:

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At this point, I had calmed down quite a bit.  When I came back from the garage, the snake didn’t have his head sticking out but I knew he would be back.  I continued to watch every few minutes and sure enough, the snake slowly came all the way out of the hole.  I was waiting for it to slither away from the house a little more but then it started to turn around.  I didn’t want it to go back into the hole so what did I do?  I grabbed that pick mattock and just started swinging!  And yelling.  I dropped it on his head first, then pick it up and just kept hacking away.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to kill the thing before it went back in the hole (but I’m sure it was an entertaining sight)!

So…we are waiting to determine what happened to the snake.

1. The snake was so badly injured by my rage that it crawled back into the hole and died.  This is a good outcome because the snake would be dead…but not good because there would be a dead snake inside our siding.

2. The snake crawled, or will crawl, back out of the hole when it feels safe.

3. The snake somehow found a way to crawl through and is now living in our basement.  This is the most unlikely of the three because there is about 1.5 feet of rock wall in between.  At least that’s what I’m telling myself.  And no, I will not be going down there to see. 

Since packing up my house and moving isn’t an option, I guess I’m going to have to practice my snake killing skills so that next time I will be prepared.  Or next time this better happen when Kyle is home. 

P.S.  When Kyle got home from work he brought a friend with him and they tried to locate the snake.  They searched the cellar and tried to look behind some siding but they couldn’t find it so hopefully it is gone! 

7 comments:

The Cutter Family said...

Friend! I know how you feel!!! We had a snake in our house too ... now my snake was smaller than your snake, but I had several around my house and we had to call a snake guy to come and investigate. I still don't like to go downstairs without shoes on!! I hope you killed him!

Anonymous said...

I agree Alexis,
Snakes and mice are the worse. I took a shovel to a snake up at the barn when we built it. I cut the head off of the snake. Sure hope they are gone.

Renee said...

I showed Gene this post, telling him how awful I felt for you! His reply, "Tell Alexis she should have used option #4: Call Gene." He said he wished you would have called because he would have loved to come take care of it. He used to live in the woods of PA, so killing snakes was like a pastime for him. He also said, "Cool! That's a rat snake. She should be glad that she has that snake around 'cause it will eat any rats that might come around." So, yeah.....call Gene next time. Seriously. It would make his day. :)

Kim said...

Well, if your mother-in-law had been there when this happened, you and I would have grabbed the girls and run to the car and not come back until someone killed that snake! YUCK-O!!!!!! I am afraid of 2 living creatures - snakes and mice.

Jerry said...

I'm sorry I wasnt available to answer the phone and give you "snake advice". I've spent many hours studying snakes and I am the expert...at least at our house on Charter Pines. :)

Unknown said...

Ew. Ew. Ew.

Emma King said...

so many of my friends and family are afraid of snakes...
I had a snake in high school that was practically my best friend and Grandma freaked out when she spent the night =]
Oh, well, guess I'm one of a kind <3