wakey wakey, hands off snakey

I don't know who first said, "I hate snakes!" Maybe it was Eve, right after she realized she was doing the first All Nude Review on her way out of Eden. I know it wasn't me, and it wasn't Indiana Jones, because I said it before him.

I'll be the first to admit, I'm a snake wimp. I hate snakes and I'm pretty sure they aren't too fond of me. They scare the livin' shit out of me. If I see one, I walk in the opposite direction, quickly. I have been to plenty of seminars, especially when I was in the Navy, about how to treat snakes (mostly leave them alone) and how to tell the difference between the poisonous and non-poisionous ones, so I'm a little educated on the subject. I'm educated enough to know I don't want to get close enough to inspect one for the telltale differences, let alone close enough to do me or it harm.

I know what you're thinking.."and you live in Florida. Oooookaaaayyyyyy." Well, I'm not fond of gators either, and I've had ridiculously close calls with a few of those, but they seem just as scared of me as I am of them, so we coexist better than me and snakes. Snakes just sit there, real still, hoping you don't notice them until you're in striking distance, because they hate you as much as you hate them.

So Sunday I'm grilling some sea bass in the backyard and I notice this thing that looks like a small branch in the yard. I walked up to it to pick it up and throw it out when I noticed...it's not a branch, so I did what I do. I backed off and left it alone. I called to the wife and pointed it out to her and she said, "Well, kill it."

"What??"

"Kill it. Get a golf club, or a shovel, or something and kill it."

"You want it dead?"

"Yeah!"

"Then you kill it. I'm perfectly happy leaving it alone to go wherever it's going."

"I'm not killing it. That's your job."

"Oh no it's not. Snake killer isn't in my job description."

"Well, what if I come out here with the dog when it's dark, or what if the youngster does. You don't want us getting bit do you?"

"No, but I don't want me getting bit either."

Soon it was a moot point, because the snake left the yard, never to be seen again...I hope.

Then came this morning. I'm up before the crack of dawn, walking the dog and I notice something next to the driveway a few houses down from us, and yeah, you guessed it...snake. Maybe the same one. It was about the same size. If I wasn't really awake yet, I certainly was then. I turned me and the dog (a ten pound pomeranian) around and walked in the opposite direction, and casually mentioned it when I got back in the house.

"There's a damn SNAKE out there!"

"Where?"

"Next to so-and-so's driveway."

"Well, did you kill it?"

"I had me, a leash, and a ten pound dog. What did you want me to do, pound it with the dog? No, I didn't kill it"

"Are you going to go back out and kill it?"

"Hell no! I hate snakes. You want it dead, you kill it."

The rest of the conversation went much like the one before, but in the end, I didn't kill it. When the youngster and I left for car pool, we drove by it slowly and it appeared to already be dead, or at least I could hope. In any case, it was in someone elses yard. Let them kill it if it has to die.

Me? I hate snakes.