During lunch yesterday, some friends told me that it had been awhile since I complained about the wildlife in Alabama. "You must be adjusting well," they told me. "We haven't heard you talk about mice and spiders."
Cut to: The Farmhouse, Seven Hours Later
While meditating in the front room, my intuition told me to go outside to see what was causing our Beagle, Molly, to bark. I took a few steps out the door, thinking I would see a rabbit or maybe a coyote. Instead, it was a four-foot Cottonmouth snake.
Cut to: Screaming woman
I ran back in the farmhouse, to the bedroom to fetch my gun Jethro. Then I ran back to get the dog, who was teasing the snake. Backing and running towards it, barking.
Cut to: Screaming woman
My voice was hoarse from screaming. I threw branches at Molly and chased her around. Jethro finally comes out with a shovel and yells back at me to get the dog inside. Doing my best Janis Joplin imitation, I yelled for Molly once again. I must've registered three octave levels at the same time. Molly looked at me as if I was being slightly unreasonable in my reaction. She stopped cold. I grabbed her and hustled her inside the house.
Cut to: Snake with mouth wide open. Fangs.
Even I caught sight of it. That thing was the thickest snake I'd ever seen in my life. And of course, I'm now screaming yet again. "Do you need the gun?" Jethro yells back at me to get into the house since he's sick of my screaming.
So I paced inside the house by the front door, waiting for Jethro to get bitten.
Cut to: Clock ticking
In what seemed like forever, I finally saw Jethro carry the limp snake out to the field with the shovel. Later on, we decided that the snake was a cottonmouth, and those snakes, friends, are venomous. It almost made Jethro wish that he grabbed his gun instead of the shovel.
As for me... It almost made me wish I grew a backbone. Maybe it's time to put in for that archery set.
