Snakes Alive!

See the empty spot to the right of the turquoise rock polisher?  That is where I had stored sandpaper and steel wool that I need for the chair I'm reupholstering.

The other day I went out to get it.  First I looked in the open plastic bin.  I found the steel wool, but no sand paper.  It must be under the plastic bin in the paint roller pan.

I lifted the bin with my left hand and reached with my right into the roller pan for the sandpaper.

"AAAAAAAGHHHH!"


I'm told they heard me scream all the way to France.  :D  Misty and Kara came running.  Herb did not.  Remind me to get his hearing checked.

(In all fairness, he was in the basement cleaning up after the Triplets.  He came when Kara and I called him.)

My reactions being in equal proportion to the volume of my scream, as soon as I saw something slither in the roller pan, I dropped the plastic bin and got the heck out of there.

Herb and I needed to yank the snaky-pan-under-the-bin off the shelf without it dropping and letting the snake escape.  I noticed a previously useless edging tool hanging on the pegboard where I had arranged all our tools.  It reminded me of a pizza peel with a very long handle.  It is now our snake-getter-off-the-shelfer!

Herb, good husband that he is, told me to stand back.  I did, and up off the ground, too!  I held his hoe/murder weapon at the ready while he pizza-peeled the roller pan and bin off the shelf and then pizza-peeled the bin out of the roller pan.  Then I handed him the hoe, and he guillotined the baby copperhead.  Well, he actually chopped it in the middle of its one-and-a-half-foot long body, but it did the trick!

There are several results of this little adventure:

I just added another task to Herb's honey-do list:  Help me clean up all the junk in the hay barn.

I will no longer stack things on the shelves in a way that provides hiding places for snakes.

All storage bins will now be closed; what if the snake had been down in among the bags of steel wool I went rummaging for?

I researched the question about whether baby snakes' venom is more toxic than adults' and found this is probably a myth, but not one that can be accurately researched.  So I will continue to follow the advice of one researcher who urged ". . . until then, try not to get bitten by any venomous snakes, no matter how old they are."


I don't blithely stroll into the hay barn any more, nor the garage, either.  I stay on the lookout for this nasty little guy's brothers and sisters.

Snakes alive!  I wonder how many there are???