I love the warmer weather.  I wish it would just get warm and stay warm.  I am tired of this one warm day and two cold days.  Enough already.  Let’s have spring.  Really it’s not even spring that I love, it’s summer.  I love the heat.  I don’t hurt when it’s hot.  I can get in the pool and relax in the water.  I can go out to the barn and ride my horse.  I love just about everything about the warmer temperatures.  Everything with the exception of Snakes!!  This is the only draw back to summer.  I hate snakes.  I live in constant fear of snakes.  Each day when I check the skimmer baskets on the pool I harbor the fear that a snake has gotten in there.  Each time I go to the horse barn I make sure I have my boots that are super thick and go all the way up to my knees on so that (God forbid) if I should get bitten by a snake it probably won’t penetrate my boots.  I know though, that if I see a snake I’ll faint dead away and the icky thing can crawl all over me as I lay out cold on the ground andthen it will  bite me where ever it wants to.  I have a first aid kit in the barn and it contains a snake bite kit.  The first direction in the instructions is STAY CALM.  You bet.  No Problem.  I’ll stay calm.  I’ll calmly wet myself,  have a heart attack,  pass out and die probably without ever speaking a word. 

My fear of snakes is well known in this family.  One summer while working in the back yard a king snake crawled out from under one of the air conditioning units.  I freaked out.  He went under the a/c unit and I went into the house.  From the window in the kitchen I watched him under the air conditioning and from under the air conditioning he watched me.  Neither of us came out.  When my husband and my oldest son came home later that night, I told them about the snake and told them to kill it.  My son refused.  He said it was a “good” snake.  I took issue with that comment.  I even presented a way he could make it better.  He still refused.  Okay, I told them that the snake could live but they would have to do all the lawn work in the back yard because I was never going outside again.  Problem solved.  No more snake.

The issue for the past couple of years has been tending to my horse, Yo Mama.  She stays in a dark barn with lots of hay and feed (mostly corn) which attracts mice and rats.  The mice and rats attract snakes.  I go out to the barn alone.  That means if I see a snake I have to deal with it alone.  I really don’t know what I’ll do and I realize that the odds are real good I am going to get to find out real soon.  I don’t think I can get close enough to a snake to kill it.  I am afraid that if I am on Yo Mama and come across a snake she’ll rear up.  I’ve had her pitch me before and it’s really not a lot of fun and if there is a snake on the ground that’s really good motivation to hang on for dear life!  I can cling like static when I need to.  When my hubby and I were dating we were in a picnic area at a table.  We were just talking and he casually mentioned that he saw a snake.  Now he’s about thirteen inches taller than me, so I figured that was thirteen inches further away from the snake so I climbed him.  It’s a good thing he has a since of humor (and strong legs).

Anyway, Spring has sprung and the shire is greening.  I will begin my planting and pulling some weeds.  All the while I will be keeping one eye on the ground where the legless and creepy dwell.  I will make a hasty exit if they enter my territory.  I cannot promise it will be graceful or Duchess like, but it will be as quick as I can make it.  I don’t know what I would do if I saw a poisonous snake…I would probably do what I said I cannot do in the previous blog.  First I would say it, and then I would do it.  I hope I never know.  My dad used to say that snakes didn’t have ears but he could make them understand that he didn’t appreciate them.   I feel the same way.   With the exception that I think I can teach them sign language.  We were at the lake once when the children were relatively small.  I was lounging in a chair in the swimming area watching the kiddos swim, when I noticed a water snake (it was a baby) swimming toward me.   I flipped the chair, screamed for the kids,  grabbed children, water toys, chairs, and watched out for the snake all as I ran for the shore.  A man came to my rescue.  He went into the water and ended up finding 3 baby cotton mouths which he removed from the swimming area.  It was only after the fact when I went to thank him that I found out he was deaf.  My oldest child has never forgotten that when I saw that snake I yelled loudly enough for the deaf man to hear me.