the day i got to channel my inner sarah agnes prine

thursday my church commitments required me to be at the church and staffed with a babysitter by 9:50am. i also had a large relief society gathering that night at my house. so, my day was laid out on paper, scheduled, and offered no time for dilly dally. no time at all. i even thought about scheduling bathroom breaks for myself because i get into these zones, it can prove dangerous.

as my mom was pulling out of my house at 9:47am after dropping uncle kyle off to babysit, she quickly returned begging me out the front door privately. she just kept pointing and saying, "what are we going to do?" she was in a panic zone. she related to me that as she was pulling out she saw a visitor coming up the lane. i mean a visitor. and as the story gets relayed over and over let's put the SNAKE at 4 feet long, okay?

as if the slithering creature had turned on its blinker from the main busy road, it was headed right up to my house with purpose. right up to my house. headed up to say hello. in the snippets of story from my mother and what i could process because i was on a schedule, i got bits of diamond back pattern and look at the end of the tail, it looks like rattles. she told me that as she was in her fancy and heavy car pulling out, upon the discovery of this slithering creature, she threw a water bottle out the window at the large snake. her intent was to see if it would coil so she could decipher if our lives were hanging in the balance or not. it didn't coil and her heavy car pulled right back up my driveway and not over the unwelcome visitor. she later confieded that she didn't want to have to clean up the guts.....

there were also other viewers from our bay window keeping an eye on the situation. of course today we are laughing, but yesterday my mother froze. she was asking me, do i run over it with my car? what do i do? yes, yes mom, run over that bad boy with your big heavy car, i kept insisting. but she couldn't. you would have been scared too at the sight of this monstrosity.

with my basketball belly, i bolted next door to the current house being built. there were manly, jacked up trucks parked in front and i thought that surely our answer would be found with all of the testosterone in the construction. surely. the first man i saw acted like he understood english until i said snake. that was met with backing away and saying no, no, no in his accented english. i kept begging if he would come dehead this bad boy with a sharp tool or shovel. he kept at his no, no, no.
upon my return to my house, i was informed that the snake did indeed make it to my house and burrowed into a hole in the front yard.

at this point i am thinking that a rattler lives in my weed infested yard and has underground paths and homes of eggs and mates all over. my poor mother is still frozen repeating, should i run over it with my car? all i knew was that my schedule did not allow for such diversions and i was needed down the street to give rides to girls for our adventure. i should have thought it thru more, contemplated that instead of a resident at my home, this snake was the traveling kind. why, he might be headed to my neighbors.

instead, i called the redhead after an hours contemplation and also upon hearing that my friend in the car, who lives up the street, had to evacuate a rattler living on her front porch last year. so i put the redhead in charge of the removal of the snake. since he and animal control are in each other's cell phones now, he got his friend on the line. mr animal control reported that it is indeed illegal to kill a rattler, but please kill it and don't call me. catch it and call me. he also reassured me that it was more than likely a blow snake. they imitate a rattler with patterns on their back and also markings on the tail looking to be rattles.

by afternoon the tale was spreading about our run in. i kept retelling the tale and had people show up in the front yard with hoes and shovels swiping along my sidewalk. also, advice that wasp spray aimed at the snakes face will kill it deader than heck. i wanted it deader that heck too i said. by the end of the day, i felt like i was crying wolf. really. a 4 foot snake with a middle the size of my thigh, okay, maybe my calf? well, that's how i felt until my back yard neighbor called me this morning.....
(to be continued)