Michael & Liz are Bloggable

Have I ever mentioned that I am deathly afraid of snakes? I actually mean that literally. I will never understand how slithering gets anything anywhere. Living on land + legs = OK. Living on land + no legs = not OK. As creatures, they just don't make any sense to me, and it's natural to fear what you don't understand.

This afternoon I was mowing the lawn and going along the side of the house, the side opposite of the deck stairs. When all of a sudden a snake about 2 feet long and probably the diameter of a penny, jumped up where it was sitting at my feet and slithered along the house foundation. That might not sound like a massive snake, but any snake is too big for me. I know the snake I accidentally killed with the lawn mower two years ago was harmless based on my post-death research, but this snake was slightly different. It was all black but had some very light gray diamond designs on it's back that made me very wary to mess with it.

This is the deathly afraid part. I screamed/moaned/yelled "AAAHHH!" when I saw it, stopped the lawn mower, and ran in the other direction. I am to snakes what Matt is to spiders. Although the difference is, when they are within the vicinity of our house and dogs, I do not think they should be alive.

Liz then comes running out on the deck with wet hair and wearing a towel. Just a towel, that's it, and says:

Liz: "I was in the bathroom and heard you scream! Are you OK? Did you hurt yourself?"
Me: "NO! THERE'S A SNAKE!"
Liz: "Oh, it sounded like you ran over yourself with the lawn mower or something."

And in my scrambling to find the snake I said:

Me: "Just keep the dogs inside."

Liz then went in and I continued to hunt the snake. I picked up small stones and lured it over to the patio where I smashed a rock down to kill it. I totally missed and it quickly slithered back under the deck where I lost it. I spent a good 15 minutes looking(slowly and steadily I might add) but to no avail.

Honestly, I wanted the snake dead but I figured my chances of finding it and successfully killing it were slim, so option 2 was to just try and scare it away and hope it goes away for good. But unfortunately I lost it so even option 2 was out of reach at this point.

I went inside and calmed down a little, and then went back out to start mowing the lawn again. I slowly walked through the grass, watching each one of my steps and slowly made my way to the mower. As I pulled the mower back to reach the rip cord, the snake then popped up right in front of one of the front wheels. I don't feel as though I am a vicious person, but when we have 10 to 15 pound dogs running around the yard, I don't want a snake of any kind anywhere near them.

So in my knee-jerk reaction, I immediately ripped the cord to get the mower running, shoved it forward on top of the snake and turned my head until I heard the inevitable thump, thud, whack. Mr. Snake was thrown out the side into 3 pieces.

I can watch 'Kill Bill' and 'Saving Private Ryan' with little or no emotional reactions but I can't watch live snake guts fly out of the mower. I was actually shaking a little bit after the incident. I guess it's good that after the many war movies I've seen, that I'm still not emotionally separated from what real live gore is. I feel terrible that I did what I did, but I keep thinking that if it were just Liz and I living here with no dogs, I'd have left it alone. It's probably one of those awesome snakes that eats bugs and rodents for us. But I can't imagine the mayhem that would have ensued had Daisy or Gryffin found it. I'd rather do the dirty deed and remove the possibility, then to roll the dice and hope they never come across it.

So I carefully scooped the snake remains onto a shovel and tossed it over the fence for a lucky bird or animal to take advantage of. Circle of life right? Hopefully the kill wasn't for nothing.