DeAnne: Snake Charmer

Yesterday was a fairly uneventful day until just before I got home. Right before I left work, DeAnne called me and said that there was a snake under the hood of her car. I figured it was just a lizard or a small garden snake. I wasn't really prepared for what I saw when I opened the hood.

It was indeed a garden snake. He was as green as a lime, and he was huge. I've lived in this house for 15 years now and I've never seen a snake on the property and the few garden snakes that I've ever seen have been pretty small, so I was a little shocked to see this guy sitting on top of DeAnne's car battery.

After the initial shock wore off, I tried to coax him onto a broom handle. Well, I missed and he instead crawled down the side panel next to the battery and disappeared. This whole time DeAnne's freaking out and I'm having a pretty good time with her about it. She decides that the only way to get him out is to crank the car. So I crank the car. Then she decides that I need to move the car out of the garage and onto the driveway. So I back the car out and as I'm getting ready to get out of the car, I put a panicked face on and throw the door open and go barreling out of the car. DeAnne looked like she was ready to faint. A cruel joke? Yes. Funny? Without a doubt.

At any rate, I put the hood back down and after a few minutes the snake got brave enough to come back up to the battery. I finally got him on the broom handle but he got wrapped around something and I couldn't get him out. Instead he crawled to the other side of the engine compartment and down the back of the other side panel. So we waited some more. After a few more minutes, I noticed something in the crack where the passenger door opens. It was him. So I opened the door and after a little coaxing he came on down to the drive way and I was able to pull him away from the car with the broom handle and pin him down with it.

I didn't really want to kill him, but DeAnne was freaking out so bad that she never would have gone outside again otherwise, so she brought me a shovel and that was that. Out of curiosity, I got the yard stick out and measured him and he was 31". I was pretty shocked. I figured he was at least 2' when I saw him in the engine compartment, but that's close to 3' than 2'.

So that was our adventure yesterday afternoon. DeAnne will probably post some pictures latter today, so keep an eye on her blog for that.

Have a good Thursday.

--Paul