Snakes

As you can imagine, there are snakes in the country.   That's not to say that they are everywhere you go.  I have stepped over a copperhead out walking one morning and we have had a couple of rattlesnakes killed near the cookhouse and front pasture.  They were small and that was quite a while ago.  I anticipate seeing them when I am out walking so IF I see one, I hopefully will not be too alarmed. 

One day I got a call from a neighbor whose husband was out of town.  She said there was a snake in her house and she did not know who else to call.  My husband was also out of town at the time, so I told her I would be right over.  This, of course, didn't make any sense because I am no slayer of snakes, but she was a young woman with small children so maybe my motherly instinct kicked.   When I arrived she ushered me into the bedroom and sure enough, laying across the blinds in the window right above the bed, was a snake.  Yep, that's what I said, right above the bed.  I did the only thing I could think of . . . I called every man I could think of in the area.  Within a few minutes, while we watched to make sure he didn't go anywhere, we had three men show up to help us.  One of the guys attempted to grab his tail and he fell behind the bed.  The snake, not the guy.  Of course this meant the young woman had to move all the junk she had stored under the bed so they could get back in the corner.  They finally pinned it down with a stick and got it out.  Turned out to be a rattlesnake!  She said it must have come from the open pipe in the bathroom.  She explained her husband had been working on the plumbing before he went out of town. 

I thanked the guys for coming and when they left, I begged her to take the kids and go stay in the cookhouse.  It's really nice inside and very comfortable with a double bed and couch to sleep on, but she wouldn't go.  She thanked me for coming and I reluctantly left.  I really didn't want them to stay in their house that night.  My thought process is that if there is a small snake, where is the mother snake?  Honestly, if it were me, no amount of money would have kept me in that house that night.  I would have had my kids out in the car before you could say "cookhouse."