No, really. I don’t like snakes.

It’s important for you to know that I don’t like snakes.

I am not bothered by most critters, creepy-crawlies, or  multi-legged lurkers, but snakes?

The sheer thought of them gives me the willies.

Y’all remember the turtle, right?

Well, I did too, and so when I was making dinner Friday night, and saw Effie bouncing along the fence line in much the same way she had been with that poor little guy, I got a little concerned.

I observed her for a minute as she planted her face in the (to tall) grass. Finally I said to my husband “Effie’s got something out there. Think it’s another turtle?”

(This was a lame attempt to say ‘Honey, go see what the heck that goofy dog has pinned now!’ without actually saying it. He didn’t catch it. It wasn’t a big deal, but I know he reads my blog, so I’m using this less subtle method of saying sometimes I’m asking for things in a subtle sorta way. K, honey? Got that? Great. Moving on.)

I decided I was going to have to go check it out. I pulled on a pair of shoes, and wandered into the back yard. I peered into the grass, trying to see what she had cornered. She pawed at it again. Stuffed her face into the weeds.

Oh. Holy. Poop. It’s a fuh-reakin’ snake.

I was back across the yard in 0.2 seconds, chills running down my spine. (Allow me to say again – snakes give me the willies! I’ve had full body shudders at least 3 times just writing this to this point!) I ripped open the back door and jumping up and down, announced to my family that it was a snake.

It was not an elegant moment. There was kind of a lot of hand flapping, perhaps a little squealing, and I just got ANOTHER shudder down my spine running back through it in my head.

We debated on what to do at this point. I hadn’t seen enough of it to know what kind it was for sure, but it looked like a black snake to me. (We have very few poisonous snakes in our area, but they do exist here, and I didn’t want to have to throw in an emergency vet run on top of the other stuff we had going on all weekend.)

While we tried to google images so I could see if I could find something that looked like what I saw, I kept an eye on the dog. And you know what happened then?

Do you see it?

In.

Her.

Mouth.

Oh, my heart stopped right at that very moment. It stopped beating, I threw up a little in my mouth, more full on body shudders that could have been mistaken as seizures, strange guttural noises emitting from my throat. It was not pretty.

And then, it got worse. And I got video.

At that point, the husband decided that perhaps it was time to try to step in. Or at least look for himself to see what kind of snake it was. (Understand that in my panic, I “saw” a black one with a red stripe. Now, unless there were two snakes out there, that wasn’t really what I saw, and my hallucination may have been part of why the darn thing was so hard to identify.)

As he started across the back yard towards it I yelled at him. In true loving wife fashion, I called out to my beloved.

“Take my camera! You know I’m gonna blog this!”

(What? You were expecting me to say something silly like “Be careful!”?)

My doting husband (giggle) came back to take my camera. This is the dog still nosing at the snake. Notice that there is nothing even vaguely red-striped about the bugger.

Yeah, it’s harmless. Thank heavens. But still. It’s a snake. And I hate snakes.

So, the hubby got the rake, and was going to toss it over the fence for me. Only it fell off the rake. And then slithered off on it’s own. So it wasn’t even dead.

Pretty good for a snake hater.

Disclaimer: While I hate them, I recognize that snakes play a vital role in keeping the field mice outta my house. Which is cool. But if I had to pick, I’d go with the mice. Not sure why, disease carrying little buggers that THEY are, but I would. Anyway, the snake crawled off on it’s own. I can’t say that no snakes were harmed in this story, because we’re pretty sure the snake had at least one small puncture wound, but we did make the effort to rescue the darn thing from the dog. At least, my husband did. So, there it is.