I’m not all that fond of critters
– wild ones at least. Now it’s not like I haven’t run into wild
things before. I did mostly grow up in the country. So I’ve seen
animals up close and personal.
I’m not all that fond of critters – wild ones at least. Now it’s not like I haven’t run into wild things before. I did mostly grow up in the country. So I’ve seen animals up close and personal.
I’ve even opened silverware drawers only to find one of Mickey’s less evolved friends staring at me. And I’ve run screaming like the girl that I am as far away from that drawer as I could get.
But in particular I don’t like snakes. In fact, I don’t like anything that looks like a snake, smells like a snake or could bite me like a snake. If I had been on an airplane as in the movie “Snakes on a Plane,” I would’ve jumped out of the dang plane without a parachute rather than confront the snakes. And I probably would have screamed like a girl then, too.
I seriously hate snakes. When a friend moved out to the country and casually informed me that a snake lived under her house, I stopped visiting. Look, if it had been my house, I would’ve moved.
No way could I go to sleep every night knowing a snake lived under my floorboards. One day, I found a lot of creepy, crawly brown things in the backyard. I called Harry screaming that snakes were taking over the lawn and demanded that he leave work immediately to come home and save me.
Turns out earthworms can grow to be really big. Who knew?
So you can imagine how thrilled I was to find out that snakes live where I live and in fact have a nearby hill named after them. And you can imagine I was even more thrilled to hear stories about the neighbor who was bit by a rattler in his garage or the neighbors who killed rattlers that were sunning themselves on various patios. Yeah. I totally tried to convince Harry to move, but apparently that’s not going to work out for me.
And then I had an encounter of my own. One fine day, Harry and I were outside admiring some new trees. So I’m walking backwards to get a better view of the stupid things when I felt my foot step on something. And when I look down, I totally freak out.
Because I have just stepped on a snake. A real, honest to goodness, not made into boots or even a cute little wallet, snake.
I couldn’t even breathe. I couldn’t talk. All that came out of my mouth was a hoarse scream. Actually several hoarse screams. I’m not kidding. I couldn’t catch my breath. I thought I was going to die there, standing on a snake and trying desperately to scream. And all the while, my husband, my knight in shining armor was … laughing. Because he is a toad. A giant, unfeeling toad.
I mean, fine. The snake was dead. In fact, it was probably deader than dead since it had apparently been run over several times. But it was STILL A SNAKE. And I had STILL STEPPED ON IT.
And you would think that the pain in the butt I share my life with would be a little understanding of that, right? Oh, no. Not Harry. He couldn’t breathe either because he was laughing so hard. Have I mentioned he’s a toad? Because he is. That man is a toad and always will be.
Of course, I step off the snake. I mean, dead or not who the heck wants to be standing in the street on top of a snake? And Harry finally tells me that the snake wasn’t poisonous.
Great. It’s still a snake. And I still stepped on it. And I stepped on it while wearing my very favorite flip-flops. Which clearly have to be thrown away. I mean, how on earth can I wear those shoes again knowing that they had been on top of dead snake ick?
And then I checked the bottom of my favorite sweatpants. Imagine the horror of them being covered with dead snake ick too? Would hot water get it out? In the end, I just tossed out my flip-flops, but washed the sweatpants in very hot water twice to get any lingering dead snake germs out.
As for Harry, he had a lucky escape. After all, the weather is cold and the snakes are hibernating. But I’m telling you, if I have a close encounter next spring or summer, I might just run over Harry instead of the snake.
