The Tale of Many Serpents. ACK!

Snakes. They are in my top three fears. That is not imaginary fears, they are real. Snakes. There is nothing fake about those evil creatures. They should be extinguished. Forever. For good. Dead.

A few weeks ago we were out in the mountains on a hike. MtnMan was the hiker of the bunch. Abby and I stayed closed to the truck. Abby would have loved to go with MtnMan, but I cannot hike up steep elevations just yet. I’m working on that. Anyway, as he walks away from the truck, he says “be careful of snakes, they will be sunning right now because it’s already getting too cold at night for them. Do you have your gun?” I replied with, “yeah, don’t worry. We’ll be okay.”

Abby is full of energy so I stay in the truck and she runs around the truck a few times, and then goes into a sprint in front of the truck. She has been trained to stay near us, so she runs up about 20 feet, then back to the truck. She does this for a few minutes and then I decide to take her on a walk, along the ledge of the rocks, since we’re at the top of the mountain. It’s fairly flat and mostly pine trees, so no shrubs and it is easy to watch for snakes. We go to the right, walk up a ways, then cross over the road. At first I start to walk down the road back to the truck but then decide to check out the other side, which is where Abby is. She then hightails it to the road, and goes into a full on run. That is when I heard it. The distinct “rattle”. Her backend jumps, as though something nipped her. I told her go to the truck (as if she even know what I was saying). When she is at the truck, I tell her to “STAY”, as I hurry my ass to the truck. We get in the truck, she is panting and wondering what on earth just happened to her fun. I grab the bino’s, and look down the road, where she was when I heard it.

He grabs the shovel out of the back to go hunt for it. I asked him if he wanted my gun, and he just laughed and said he has his own.. but seriously, I was thinking that he could go in with two and shoot it up like you see in old westerns. He wasn’t interested in what I felt was a well thought out strategy. He took a shovel and walked all over the area. No snake.

That was one incident, that began the domino effect of serpents popping into my bubble. I don’t really know how else to put it, but on to my next tale, which is a true story. lol.

Red, of Texas Red, was on vacation in Nevada and they camped around all kinds of snakes, apparently. Cue the *eye roll*. For whatever reason, which I have still not figured out, he thought I would want to see a rattlesnake that was in their camp because it was pink. Pink? Fuck that, I just want to know if they killed it. Nope. They put it into a bucket, which he sent to my phone. I refused to open it and the next day I asked MtnMan to delete the damn thing. Red sent another picture with the snake, and MtnMan thought I would want to see it before he deleted the message. MtnMan accidentally hit the screen and the important picture disappeared and the snake was on my phone! ACK!! I don’t know who freaked out more, him or me. lol. I deleted the entire history of text messaging with Red. Done. Deleted. Fuck. That. Shit.

Later that night, I was perusing my FB timeline and there was a story posted by a local warning locals about buying plants from nurseries, and this kind person was nice enough to add pictures. The warning was that someone here bought a plant from a big box store and when she got it home to plant it, she was struck by a goddamn cottonmouth. ACK! Are you fucking kidding me? Not only am I getting tired of seeing those serpents, but now I have to stop buying plants. I meant, that might sound like a drastic measure to you, but holy fuck. We don’t have cottonmouths in Nevada. Those bastards are in Texas and they are not to be messed with. If I buy another plant, I am going to have to go about beating it to death before I put it in my cart and then once home, I will have to shoot the basket of dirt for good measure. My heart rate is elevated just typing this thread! Can you imagine? Just think, you want to beautify your home, so you select the most perfect of all plants for the front of your house. You know, so that anyone that visits will think, “wow, what a beautiful home, that bush was the best purchase you could have made. I need that same plant for my front door.” And then you reply with, “oh, that thing?” … yes, that thing that you almost died from but instead you just lost three of your fingers from a cottonmouth that survived a truck ride from the south to the northwest and didn’t strike any of the handlers. It lied in wait for you. That fucking bush. Yeah, I’m not buying another goddamn plant from anyone. Abby is all we need to beautify our home.

Now, fast forward another 3 days and we are out in the mountains again and MtnMan throws the truck in reverse, and I’m trying to figure out what the fuck we’re looking for. He tells me try not to look in the road. So, I look right in the road and see a SNAKE!!! Fuck me.

We are moving. I hear Patrick was a real saint and evicted the evil serpents from all of Ireland. He kicked them right out. Gone. Done. No snakes live in Ireland and they thank Saint Patrick for that. Personally, I think it was due to the fact that the waters rose and the land separated, making Ireland an island. But, when we become citizens, I will raise a beer mug to that crazy Saint Paddy who was so brave he went right up to each one and said “off you go!” as he swiftly kicked them into the sea. See the illustration below: