All Manner of Creepiness

So Spring has sprung. The birds are getting frisky with each other, trees are budding, snakes are shedding skins.... (allow me a moment for my skin to quit crawling). And it's freaking me out!

So here I am, minding my own business working in the flower beds out front a couple weeks ago, and what to my wandering eyes should appear but a snake skin. GAG! I hurry and finish planting my daylilies, figuring the former owner of the too-small skin is somewhere poised to torment me further.

We had a garden last spring/summer. It's time to get it in shape for this growing season. Every time DH and the kids would go out there and lift up a landscaping brick, they'd find a snake. Some little "dirt snake" or "ground snake" that they said resembled an overgrown earthworm. I, however, am no dummy, and realize they are just telling me this so I won't move out. I'm certain that they snakes they killed are probably about 6 feet long w/ 2" fangs, poised to torment me further.

Wednesday of last week, I open the door to the closet in the laundry room, and out of the corner of my eye (quite sharp, I assure you), I spy something on the wood door frame above my head. It's pale white, kind of curved but still. I took something and poked it, and down flutters a 7" long reptile skin. IN MY HOUSE! I let out a scream. DS starts crying. DD runs to see the action. So DD carries the skin outside to dispose of it, as I did NOT want that thing in my kitchen garbage can with all my clean, sanitary garbage. By the time she comes back inside, I've made an appointment with an exterminator. We tell DH about it that night, and he assures me no snake can crawl up the door facing, and get in the space above the door, between the jamb and the door, and that it must be a lizard skin. I told him the skin had no feet on it. He gave me the looks that says "crap! she knows!"

So I'm walking around here on eggshells, watching for a snake at every turn. Nothing. I even considered getting a cat again. Then, it happened. Friday afternoon, DS comes around the corner and shrieks "Snaaaaaaaake!" I look around and see him pointing to something on the floor. I had my glasses off, because I was working at the computer, so I couldn't see squat. But I know a snake coil when I see it, blind or not! I grab the phone and call 911, who immediately dispatches Animal Control. The snake was indeed tormenting me further.

This thing, amazingly, does resemble an overgrown earthworm. But it is my mortal enemy, and one of us has to go. So I'm on the front porch, waiting for Animal Control to arrive. DD is keeping an eye on it, and watches the hell-spawn slither behind the piano and my chair (Oh, leather LazyBoy chair for sale- cheap!), and attempt to crawl up the floor lamp. That's when I knew that thing slithered up into my closet door to shed it's skin. I'm feeling nauseated at this point, and about that time Animal Control arrives. The guy doesn't really look wiry enough to be a snake wrangler, but I'll take what I can get. So he brings in these big metal stick things with clamps on each end. I guess they are the proverbial "ten foot poles." I point to the area of the intruder where DD has it in her sights, and the guy leans over and stifling a laugh, picks up the dangerous predator. He walks toward me with the thing coiled around his gloved fingers and tries to explain that it's non-poisonous. I was backed against a wall and told him not to come any closer. My DD further explained to him that I am afraid of snakes. He stopped and turned to go out the front door. I also asked him to please not release it in my front yard, that it would just come back in again. He put it in a sturdy metal cage on his truck and drove off with my sincerest thanks.

So I wasted no time in heading to Dollar General to buy 4 lbs. of mothballs to spread around the exterior of the house. Mothballs do an excellent job of keeping undesirable critters away, as they hate the smell. I do too, but every time I smell it I think of a reptile-free yard and I decide I kind of like that smell.

On the way to the store, I called DH and told him what happened. He came home, apparently feeling guilty, and went straight to the garden on a self-proclaimed Reign of Terror with Shock and Awe, armed only with a hammer. He killed 3 momma-size snakes (extra-large earthworm sized) and 18 baby snakes (the size of the vicious predator who had invaded my house). Twenty-one snakes!

So now you see why I could not enter any blog entries last week. My hands were shaking too bad and I was delirious from lack of sleep, due to dreaming about snakes. I used to think I liked spring. Now I'm not so sure.