Snakes in a Car

I hate snakes.  Hate them.  I know those of you who are mega animal lovers will message me with complaints of how snakes are misunderstood; of how beneficial they are to the environment; of how I should just give them the benefit of the doubt.   Nope.  Not gonna do it.  I know they eat rats and insects and.......

I still hate snakes.

I hate how they crawl. How they stick their little tongues out.  How sneaky quiet they are. How poisonous some of them are.  How ... snake-y they are.  I hate it all.

I hate how when it rains too much around here in the spring and summer, we have little baby snakes that pop up in our yard.  I hate when my hubby comes in and tells me that he killed a big snake while mowing.  I hate how when our tree fell down in the backyard, there was a snake living in the rotten trunk.

When The Bean was a baby, we had a French door as a front door.   She was about nine or ten months old, crawling around everywhere.   I was sitting on the couch one day while she played on the floor.  Something caught her attention, and she took off towards the door.  She loved to sit and look out the windows, so I thought nothing of it.

She started beating on the glass and talking.   Then, I started hearing a weird noise, almost like a dull knocking sound.   When I turned around, there was a snake on the outside of the door swaying like a cobra.  The knocking sound was it striking the glass trying to bite my baby.

I freaked out and called 911.  They didn't appreciate my alarm.   Someone finally came out from Animal Control to capture the six foot chicken snake.  

Have I mentioned I hate snakes?

When I was in high school, I lived out in the country. I had a boyfriend who was in law enforcement and who hated snakes even more than me.  One night he had just arrived to pick me up on a date.  As he and I walked on the stepping stones to get to the car, there was a little garden snake lying between the stones.   He ran to the car to get his .45 so he could shoot it in the middle of my yard.  Just a little bit of overkill, for sure, but I thought it was funny at the time.

Now, I totally get where he was coming from.

I was driving home from work one day in my Jeep.   As my mind was going over the day, I felt something brush against my foot. I figured it was my pants leg and kinda twitched my ankle to get my pants to fall differently.

I felt the brush again, more insistent this time.   And then it moved up my leg.   When I looked down, I almost wrecked the car.   There was a snake hanging from my dash, its head on my leg.

I may have blacked out momentarily.

I do know I kicked the tar out of the snake and raced like an idiot the final five minutes home, my eyes on the floorboard the entire time.   It's amazing I didn't run into a tree.

When I got home, frantic, frenetic, and completely freaked out, my husband was all calm, cool, and collected as he interrogated me.  "What did its eyes look like?   Where the pupils round or slits?"

"I'm sorry I was too busy trying not to die to look at its eyes."

"Was its nose rounded or pointed?"

"See my previous answer."

"Was its head shaped like a diamond?"

"I don't know.   It was shaped like a snake that was on my foot in the middle of my freakin' car."

"What kind was it?"

"I don't know.   I didn't interview it.  I kicked it and it went into the dash."

"Was it poisonous?"

"I.  Don't. Know. It was a snake in my car that shouldn't have been there.  AND IT'S STILL THERE.  FIX THAT!!!!"

So, off my hubby went to check the car.  He looked under the dash and banged on it a couple of times, and that was his inspection.

"I don't see it," he said.

Really?  Banging on the dash didn't make him poke his head out??? Can't imagine why not!

And that was that.

It's been about eight months since that day.   I still look down from time to time just to double check and make sure the snake isn't peaking up at me.  I've not seen it again, but it freaks me out to think that it's still in there. Every time my pants brush my bare ankle in that car, I jump.  Whenever I turn the heater on the floor, I keep my eyes peeled in case it gets too hot for the snake and he comes out of hiding.

My hope and prayer is that once I parked the car, the snake decided that the car was not a safe place for it to be and it promptly crawled out and went to find new place to live.  I'm sure that's what happened...

Right??   Don't  you agree?

In the meantime.... anyone want to buy a Jeep? I've got one for sale.....