Yesterday, in a fit of stupidity, I turned all the jets on in the spa to make sure they worked OK. The result was that a bunch of crud in the lines flushed right into the tub. It's been months since I turned the jets on. Usually, if I'm in the spa, I'm reading, or doing crossword or Sudoku puzzles. No jets.
It's not the end of the world. I go to the pump house and get a hose and the sump pump to empty the spa. I get the pump started and then go back in to turn off the breaker so the pump doesn't suck air and burn itself out.
Lalala. I'm doing that when out of the corner of my eye, I see something go by behind the pump. It's about the width of a broom handle, dark with a longitudinal stripe. A snake. I think to myself: "Self, it has a long stripe. It must be a garter snake." But it definitely had scales. Most garter snakes have such small scales that they look smooth and shiny.
Trust me, I stewed about this for a while, wondering how I was going to talk myself into going back in to turn the pump back on. I peeked around the door jamb and saw the snake coiled in the corner. And good blogger that I am, I ran and got my camera. (I know it's a mess in there. I haven't cleaned it since the last time the spa doctor was there. So sue me.)
Anyway, what I noticed when I studied these pictures was that the snake had a fattish body and a tapered tail. And it definitely didn't have that blunt head that garter snakes are supposed to have.
I was looking in the yellow pages for animal control, when I heard a truck pull up. Red's friend Sam who checks on me now and then (I may have mentioned that a couple of his old buddies do that) had just pulled up. Sam's lived here all his life, and worked in plant nurseries and landscaping.
I told him what happened, and he looked in the shed and said "Yup, that's a Highland Moccasin". He spent the next half-hour cornering and killing that snake. I was of very little help.
The snake was about three feet long. I feel terrible. Normally, I am pretty live-and-let-live about snakes. (Of course, usually I meet them as I stride across the lawn to get the paper, and they are gone in a flash.) But I know I could never have set foot in that shed again knowing that snake was in there. It might not have struck me and killed me, but it sure as heck would have given me a heart attack.
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The other thing that strikes me about this is that I normally wouldn't have taken a picture of the snake. But in the back of my mind was this tiny voice saying "you should blog about this". That little voice hounds me more and more of the time. I am becoming a recorder of the things around me, and sometimes feel as if I am standing aside and looking in at my own life. I also think I do things I might not have otherwise done (some of my travelling, for example), except that I think they would make interesting blogs. A blurring at the intersection of truth and fiction.
Hey, that was a great blog entry! Blogging about the things you do to blog about! ;)
Posted by: Shawn Lea | June 10, 2006 at 06:18 PM