Sunday, June 10, 2012

Don't Mess With Bill

Friday, my husband called me out on the back porch to show me that a bird had built a nest and laid eggs in a storage cabinet on the back porch. He had been planning to clean it out, but he was going to leave it until the birds were hatched and gone.

In the evening, my granddaughter, Tessa, came in from taking a walk, and when she looked in the cabinet to see the eggs, she interrupted a snake having dinner. He struck at her, and she came in and told me--very calmly actually. I guess having fallen in a ditch with a cottonmouth or copperhead or something like that last year has inured her to snakes. She told me that it was okay because the snake had round pupils, and even though it comforted me greatly to know that she gotten close enough to the snakes head to be able to tell the shape of his pupils in the dark, I wasn't 100% sure she was correct.



So, I went and woke up my husband who napping, and he went out to save the day. He tried to get the snake out without killing it but Tessa said it kept shaking the cabinet with its tail and striking at them, so I just sat in the living room and let things take their course. Then Bill came in and got his pellet gun and I heard some shots and some banging and when it got quiet, I went out and saw the snake on the porch. It was just a black rat snake and normally we wouldn't have killed it, but we think it's the one we found in the kitchen cabinets one day and by golly, the fact we didn't kill you when you came before doesn't mean that we're going to welcome you back--if you are a snake, anyway.

Tessa had a pretty pestilencial sort of day. She was bitten by a spider and a tick, but at least she escaped the fangs of the snake. Today has been better.

And, by the way, last night I started thinking about how many things there are in that cabinet that might have exploded when hit by a pellet, but I don't really want to dwell on it.

I've been planning for a while now to post some pictures of the eclectic bunch visitors we have had to house over the years. I wish I had a picture of the pot-bellied pig that walked up the back steps or the deer that went for a dip in the swimming pool, but we didn't have phones with cameras then. 

AMDG


8 comments:

  1. Nice snake; big gloves; pretty girl.

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  2. "the fact we didn't kill you when you came before doesn't mean that we're going to welcome you back"

    For some reason that strikes me as a very southern thing to say. :-)

    The first picture suggests that Bill has just delivered the "Come out with your hands up" ultimatum. "You dirty low-down varmint" would be literally applicable in this case. And my next thought was "It's going to be a big mess if he hits that big jug of herbicide" or whatever that is on the top shelf.

    Anyway, glad it all worked out ok. For the humans, anyway. Were there any eggs left?

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  3. The snake rather goes with the T-shirt and hair, somehow.

    I'm pretty sure if our eldest got his hands on a snake, he'd think it time for an experiment in amateur taxidermy.

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  4. MacBeth, Why does that make me think of Warf? At least she didn't try to pick it up by the tail.

    Maclin, the only egg left is the one we can see through one of the wounds.

    Paul, Actually the T-shirt is something philanthropic and not really black. The picture did somehow remind me of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, but without the black gloves and snake, she looks pretty normal. I just chose that one because of the expression on her face.

    AMDG

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  5. The picture made me think of a heavy metal album cover. I trust that was a gross misperception.

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  6. If you look closely at the T-shirt, you will see that it's a picture of a stork bringing a baby.

    AMDG

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  7. Well, it's a pellet gun. It's not much fun for snakes and squirrels, but not lethal to humans--but you might shoot your eye out.

    AMDG

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