Enmity!
Despite the calendar date, summer has arrived in Texas. It is hot, it is muggy, and there are SNAKES!
Snakes and I have a history. Growing up in rural Missouri with three big brothers, I saw enough snakes to know that I hated them. Childhood trauma aside, it was in the late 90s, when we were restoring an1800s home in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia that I truly got my fill.
Way up under the eaves of the third story, we spotted rotten wood. We hired a big strapping Virginia carpenter to come and take care of it. After several hours on the ladder in the late Autumn sunshine, there was a sharp knock at my back door. I opened it to see carpenter Dan, standing wide-eyed and sweaty before me.
“Ma’am,” he stammered, “We’ve got a problem” . I stood silently waiting to hear that perhaps the purchased wood was the wrong size, or maybe that the paint was going to be difficult to match. I smiled encouragingly at his panicked face. “Yes?” Another slow count of silence, then, “You’ve got snakes in your house.” He went on to tell me that as he was up on the ladder tearing out some of the rotten trim, “the biggest black snake I’ve ever seen” poked his head out at him, slithered out across a wire, and into a tree. I politely handed the phone to him, and said coldly, “Call my husband.”
I would love to share a warm-hearted happy ending to our cold-blooded visitors story, but alas, there is not one. Till the day we removed from the house, we battled black snakes, in the house, in the gorgeous stone walls surrounding our exterior stairs, sunning on the front stoop on fine afternoons, and stretched across the patio gate, denying access to the table and chairs sitting just beyond it.
I fear them. I hate them. They repulse me.
I know that they are out there. I read (mostly looked at the pictures) several books on Texas snakes when we decided to buy a country property, forewarned is forearmed. But to see them, on our land, near our home, multiple times in one day, is a bitter pill indeed.
Conventional wisdom says that dogs and cats keep them away. Wrong! And the remainder of my family, Farm Girl included, thinks they are interesting critters to be captured if possible and examined at length, pardon the pun.
So we spent nearly an hour Tuesday morning camped in front of a big oak halfway down the driveway, armed with lawn chairs, coffee, and cameras, waiting for a nasty snake to emerge from a hole in the tree where a squirrel once lived.
Before the day was out, we would find an abandoned snake skin just outside the entrance to a formerly innocent looking decaying log out front. And oh yes, one more live one twining around the lattice near the back door.
Shoes on, camera in hand, I’m ready for them. Despite my complaints, I still love our land, and I’m not going to insist we move. Unless I find rotten trim up under eaves.
Despite the calendar date, summer has arrived in Texas. It is hot, it is muggy, and there are SNAKES!
Snakes and I have a history. Growing up in rural Missouri with three big brothers, I saw enough snakes to know that I hated them. Childhood trauma aside, it was in the late 90s, when we were restoring an1800s home in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia that I truly got my fill.
Way up under the eaves of the third story, we spotted rotten wood. We hired a big strapping Virginia carpenter to come and take care of it. After several hours on the ladder in the late Autumn sunshine, there was a sharp knock at my back door. I opened it to see carpenter Dan, standing wide-eyed and sweaty before me.
“Ma’am,” he stammered, “We’ve got a problem” . I stood silently waiting to hear that perhaps the purchased wood was the wrong size, or maybe that the paint was going to be difficult to match. I smiled encouragingly at his panicked face. “Yes?” Another slow count of silence, then, “You’ve got snakes in your house.” He went on to tell me that as he was up on the ladder tearing out some of the rotten trim, “the biggest black snake I’ve ever seen” poked his head out at him, slithered out across a wire, and into a tree. I politely handed the phone to him, and said coldly, “Call my husband.”
I would love to share a warm-hearted happy ending to our cold-blooded visitors story, but alas, there is not one. Till the day we removed from the house, we battled black snakes, in the house, in the gorgeous stone walls surrounding our exterior stairs, sunning on the front stoop on fine afternoons, and stretched across the patio gate, denying access to the table and chairs sitting just beyond it.
I fear them. I hate them. They repulse me.
I know that they are out there. I read (mostly looked at the pictures) several books on Texas snakes when we decided to buy a country property, forewarned is forearmed. But to see them, on our land, near our home, multiple times in one day, is a bitter pill indeed.
Conventional wisdom says that dogs and cats keep them away. Wrong! And the remainder of my family, Farm Girl included, thinks they are interesting critters to be captured if possible and examined at length, pardon the pun.
So we spent nearly an hour Tuesday morning camped in front of a big oak halfway down the driveway, armed with lawn chairs, coffee, and cameras, waiting for a nasty snake to emerge from a hole in the tree where a squirrel once lived.
Before the day was out, we would find an abandoned snake skin just outside the entrance to a formerly innocent looking decaying log out front. And oh yes, one more live one twining around the lattice near the back door.
Shoes on, camera in hand, I’m ready for them. Despite my complaints, I still love our land, and I’m not going to insist we move. Unless I find rotten trim up under eaves.
