Snake Charmer...NOT!

Have any of the rest of you noticed the high volume of snakes this summer? The warm weather began with Bill killing two small snakes in our yard. I told him to rake the leaves last fall, lazy man.

That slaughter was in April. Since then, my cousin, Tina, has been dealing with an invasion of snakes in her yard. She’s lucky because Jake, her yellow Labrador, and his sidekick Black Betty, a canine of unknown origins, enjoy killing any snake that wonders into Tina’s yard. Black Betty finds the snakes, and Jake kills them. Unfortunately, Jake spent a few days in the vet’s hospital from a lethal dose of snake venom a few weeks ago. He survived and is back to his favorite pastime of dispelling all snakes around his home.

Besides snakes in yards, I’ve seen snakes streaking across simmering asphalt several times in the past month. Two weeks ago on a week night, Hannah and I driving through the neighborhood on our way to Books-A-Million for a caramel macchiato witnessed just two houses down from my house, a snake slither out of the brush in front of my vehicle. I screamed, and my legs flew up in the air, well, as much as the steering wheel would allow. I know. I was in the safety of my Explorer so why throw my legs up? Beats me. It’s just a natural reaction for me. Bill and Hannah have tried to rationalize with me about the absurdity of my reflex to snakes outside the vehicle, but my brain refuses to compute. This past Friday, I was driving through the local back roads to a job interview at a county school, and a snake swirled across the road into the heated knee length grass on the side of the road. Yes, my legs went air born again.

Seeing snakes on the roads cannot compete with what I witnessed this past Thursday. Tina, Chrissy, Maw, Stuart, Mary Eden, and Grant met me, my mother, and Colin at my mom’s house to follow us to my sister’s house to go swimming in her pool. (Poor Tracy was miserably sweating it out camping in Grenada, and we were relaxing in her pool. *g*) After we returned to mother’s house, Maw, my grandmother, wanted to gather some vegetables from two small gardens that my mother and stepdad have planted in their yard. My mother went to the lower garden, and my grandmother went to the garden beside the driveway.

The garden that Maw decided to visit has a small shed beside it. Unbeknownst to Maw, lurking in the small structure, was a very big, ugly, and nasty snake, which had staked a claim to the small shelter because of its appetite for mice. Stuart was the first to spot the snake, and Maw, being the country girl that she is, grabbed a hoe and began to do battle. Now, Maw is 77 years-old, but in that aged body beats the heart of a warrior. (Cue Xena battle cry.) Her sight is not as well as it used to be. However, her hearing is just fine to Hannah and Kristen’s amazement. As they say, you can’t cuss around Maw! But I digress. Sorry. Now, back the story.

Maw with her chosen weapon commenced to whack at not the snake, but at a green painted chain that was curled up next to the snake. She walked all over that snake as she pounded the chain, and she was miraculously never bitten. The snake, being the smart type, that of slithering for its life, was trying to get the hell out of there, but Maw realized that she was taking whacks at the wrong thing. She began striking blows at the snake, and the snake, knowing that retreat was futile, began fighting back. The rest of us, except for my mother who was not witnessing this battle, were frozen in mute horror watching the matriarch of our family do ferocious battle with this venomous enemy. Too bad the damn hoe was blunt and not sharpened. Poor Maw was just beating the hell out the snake instead of cutting off its head. And the snake was rising up in the air to a striking poise and exposing its fangs and tongue as Maw leaned in for each whack. If she didn't chop off its head, then at least it would be one brain damaged snake. Later on, Maw claimed that she believed that she knocked the snake out a few times, but the snake refused to stay down. Maw said that the more that it would hiss at her, the more she thought, “I’m going to kill you.”

During the fight, Tina, being the seasoned snake killer that she is, realized that Maw needed a sharper hoe. None of us volunteered to take Maw’s place. I’m not that brave. We knew that the blunt hoe would never end the struggle, and gladiator-hearted Maw was tiring. Somehow, Tina saw another hoe on the carport and yelled for me get it. We got the sharper hoe into Maw’s deadly hands, and the snake’s head was lopped off. Upon investigation, the snake was discovered to be at least several feet long and almost as big around as a 16 ounce Coke bottle. Also, the triangular head identified it as poisonous and the markings on its skin revealed it to be a Cotton Mouth, or Water Moccasin, a very deadly breed of snake that inhabits the south. *shudder*

On discovering what had transpired while she had been in the lower garden, my mother scrambled into her house and refused to go outside again. I’m scared of snakes, but my mother is terrified of snakes. I’ve seen her kill a huge Weeping Willow tree as a repercussion of shooting at a snake. I missed that tree. It was great for playing Tarzan. Even with this recent snake killing by Maw, my mother wanted to know why nobody had yelled down to the garden for her to get her gun, a 30.06 (thirty-ought-six), and scope the blasted thing. She would have blown away the small shed and anything else in the vicinity, too. Poor Mother is afraid of other snakes lurking in her yard, and she is threatening to buy a pig. Supposedly pigs kill and eat snakes. When I asked her how she was going to keep the pig in her yard and out of the road, she said that it would be easy. She has an underground wire system running around her yard to keep her Schnauzers from getting into the road. The wire has a small electrical current running to it, and the dogs wear collars that shock them when they get too close to the underground wire. My mother said that she would buy another collar for the pig. My mother and her ideas! A pig running around with a dog-shock-collar on! LOL!

It’s Sunday, and no pig has appeared at my mother’s house. But I’m not ruling out the possibility of a pig showing up in the future, especially if another snake is spotted in or near her yard. She lives within the city limits, and I highly doubt if the city would turn a blind eye to her pig or the smell.

What about you? Any snake problems, stories, or remedies to get rid of snakes? If I can keep my mom from a pig, lots of people will be grateful. I've heard that moth balls work, but then again, I've heard that they don't. I'm sick of snakes. I hate snakes, and everyone is predicting that snakes will be out in droves this year because we had such a mild winter. I guess I could always dig up my roots and move the family to Ireland. Now, that doesn't sound too bad. :-)