As much as I wish I didn't have to write this, I feel I have to. Last night we had another incident of the snakey kind. Everyone is fine but man oh man what a night.
Denise was off running around with her mother and I was home all alone. I heard the dogs growling outside and went to investigate. Poking my head out the door I saw that Taz and C.C. were tugging at something. My heart jumped because my first reaction was "SNAKE!". I settled down and thought that hopefully it was just a mole. I urged the dogs inside hoping all along that they wouldn't bring whatever it was in with them. Once inside I tried to decide if I should go out and investigate.
If I investigated and it was a snake that was hurt but alive I would have freaked. If it was a snake that was dead I was going to freak as well. Not real good options there. Well, I looked out the window and saw on the patio half of a snake!! Not just any snake mind you, from my vantage point it looked like a coral snake!!
Not wanting to jump to conclusions (do you see a trend here?) I hopped on the trusty internet to look up coral snakes. With a picture and description in mind I bravely grabbed a flashlight and shovel and inspected the body. Sure enough it was a coral snake. A DEADLY coral snake!!
Now I allowed myself to freak!
What do I do? Did the dogs get bit? C.C. acted normal, Fred acted normal but Taz was all droopy! Should I call the vet? I wish Denise was here!!
In an unusual twist, I forced myself to calm down and think this through rationally. Corals are not vipers, they do not have long fangs and strike like a rattler. They bite and chew which injects the venom. Maybe, hopefully, the dogs killed it before it could bite them. Taz was acting more normal by now. Maybe she was just upset that I had called her away from her new toy.
Okay, the dogs seemed okay. Now...I had to do something about the snake. First off I needed to find the entire thing. So again I grabbed the shovel and two flashlights (you can never have enough light) and bravely ventured into the back yard. Slowly I scanned the area. I found the middle piece then the tail. Once I was done I had an entire coral snake (whew, the dogs didn't eat any of it) which was about a foot and a half long. I scooped it up, dug a hole about a foot deep outside the fence and buried the evil, evil thing.
Flush from my victroy from certain death I popped a beer and allowed myself to be properly scared until Denise got home.
Today I mowed the yard down nice and low, hoping to avoid any more snake incidents for a while.
On a brighter note, Tomorrow (8/2/00) Fred finally goes in to get fixed. I kind of feel bad about it mainly because he gets so terrified at the vet. But the animal shelter called and threatened us with a fine if we didn't get it done so tomorrow he becomes less of a boy and more of an it. Wish him luck!