I must admit, I know that I’ve gone through a lot of changes this past year, but the biggest one yet has happened today. I’m sure that you know by now that I HATE snakes. I’ve seen a couple and I’ve killed a couple. So when I think of them, I almost shiver. So today I was by the chicken coop and was wondering what in the world was in the lawn. The first thing that I thought of was that the dogs took one healthy bowl movement and I thought to myself – Good Grief! But then I looked again and this circle of what I thought was from the dogs was really a SNAKE! If I would have stepped on it with my chore flip flops on, I swear you would have heard me from your living room. So instead of freaking out, guess what I did? I ran and got a camera. Yup, I didn’t scream, or cry, or anything, just went to get my camera. I laid on the grass and took a picture and was disappointed that he wouldn’t stick out his tongue at me. Too bad he didn’t know that his day was going to take a very unlikely turn in a few minutes. So after I put my camera back, I went to the old milk house to get the sand shovel to finish this job. I never realized how short the handles are on a sand shovel until today. With no other choices, I took the shovel and started back to the chicken coop. I knew that the two contractors are watching me with this shovel and I suppose they are thinking, now what is she doing? I couldn’t find the snake at first, and then when I found it I thought – here it goes. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and then hit the snake. Well, if this was any other animal it would have died with one blow. But after the third hit, I thought you just have got to be dead by now. So I scooped it up on the shovel and went to the two contractors to make sure that this was a garter snake. The first thing that they asked me is if it was dead and they kind of backed away. They must not know me very well, because there would be no way I’d have a snake with me unless it was dead. So I asked them what kind of snake it was, and they said that it was a garter snake. They thought it was still alive. I don’t think it was, because at this point it didn’t really have a head attached to it’s body, but the tail was still twitching. So I took it back to the fire barrel and hit it one more time and then put it in it. I didn’t want to put it anywhere else, just in case it wasn’t dead. I looked up on the internet just to make sure that it was this kind of snake and they were right. When I was putting it in the fire barrel, the dogs went running to the chicken coop and were digging in the ground. I thought – no way there was another snake was there? So I took my shovel and started to move the grass. A little mouse ran out and the dogs went crazy. I thought to myself, maybe I should have let the snake catch the mouse before I killed it. But then, the dogs were trying to catch it themselves and they are so much better having around than a snake:)
Garter snake in our back yard today
The cement didn’t get poured today because it tried to rain on and off all day. Since we’re going to texture the cement, we couldn’t have it rain on it. They got all the forms in and now tomorrow they’ll pour the cement. The contractors made the mistake of petting both the dogs, and now they follow the guys around all day. With new cement tomorrow – I’ll have to leave them locked until Friday.
Just waiting now for the cement