This morning while I was leisurely sitting at our kitchen table (contemplating all that I wanted and needed to accomplish for the day and just how in the world I was going to get it all done), while the kids played in the den and Brad worked in his home office, I noticed that there were a bunch of birds right by our patio. They usually gather around the tree, that's approx. 20 feet from the house, from which we've hung the bird feeders and under which we've spread birdseed on the ground. There were at least a dozen little House Sparrows, a Mockingbird, and an American Robin.
The Mockingbird was coming closer and closer to the patio and then hopped up onto the patio. It was hopping from side to side some and fluffing/puffing (how do I describe the actions of a bird?) up it's wings. I could tell it's eyes were focused on something, and at first I thought it was Cam's t-ball stand. Then my eyes drifted down to the patio and to my astonishment I realized that there was a HUGE snake slithering on the edge of the patio!
I realize now that my reaction was somewhat delayed. I thought, "Wow, there's a snake there!" and stood up to get a better look. As it dawned on me just how big of a snake this was I thought, "Brad will want to see this." and I called for him. Then it hit me, "Brad needs to take care of it (ie. get rid of it), and fast!" I yelled, "Come here! Fast!" Being the good attentive husband that he is, he thought I was calling him to come see a cool bird and came quickly. I told him there was a snake and the kids heard and came running over to see. We all rushed outside to get a better look. Don't worry, the snake was headed in the opposite direction of the back door and we were careful and didn't get too close (except for me who wanted to get a good picture of it, and later realized how stupid I was for getting so close-approx. a foot and a half from it's face).
We had no idea of what kind of snake it was, but knowing there are some very venomous snakes around here (Copperheads, Cottonmouth Water Moccasins), Brad knew he had to get rid of it. He grabbed a curtain rod (we still have them lying around since we haven't put all the curtains up in the house) that has the bent ends and thought he could use it to pin it's neck down so he could grab it's head (I found out what he was thinking after the fact). In the video you'll hear me (after the kids and I narrowly escaped back into the house and shut the door before the snake could slither inside with us) shush the kids and yell, "What??" because I could hear Brad through the door ask me for something but I couldn't really hear him. He was asking me for a longer curtain rod, and I quickly went and grabbed him the 4 ft. rod to replace the 2 ft. rod he was using (wow, this all sounds so dangerous...good thing we just go on autopilot and don't sit down and first contemplate all that could go wrong..we'd never take action, and just lock the door and never go outside again).
The snake climbed up the outside wall and was on our kitchen windowsill for a couple minutes and the kids loved seeing it so up close. They said they could see it's tongue go in and out of it's mouth. Then it slithered back down and around the corner of the house where it climbed up the house and Brad was able to pin it and grab it's neck.
If I'm able to upload that video (I've tried twice now and it won't upload) you'll be able to see him as he ever-so-calmly grabs it's neck and works to uncoil it from the garden hose holder. You'll also hear me ask (in fear), "Do you know what you're doing?" just in case I needed to be ready for an ER visit.
Apparently he did know what he was doing because he got such a good grip on that snakes neck it wasn't budging. (By the way, I have gotten "the chills" I can't even tell you how many times while writing this).
I won't go into all the details of exactly how he killed the snake, but I will tell you, for educational purposes (and because it surprised me-and freaked me out), that once you chop off the head of a snake (at least this particular snake) it takes a good 20 minutes for the two different parts to stop moving. So, once we were able to stretch the snake out straight and it would stayed that way we measured it. As you can see in the picture, it was 5 feet 3 inches long!
From the research we did we've determined that it was an adult Western Rat Snake. We were relieved to discover that it is a nonvenomous snake; however, we did have a lesson on what to do if you see a snake while playing in the yard.
Whew! After Brad and I had our adrenaline crashes, we continued on with the drudgery of making (you know how tired you are after an adrenaline crash) and eating (after some of the more gruesome details had replayed in our heads a few times our appetites had somewhat lessened) lunch, and returned to the tasks at hand. And in case you're wondering about all the needed and desired accomplishments I had been sitting there so peacefully contemplating; well, let's just say I got a few things accomplished today, and leave it at that.
