Snakes in the House

Oh here we go. My LEAST favorite time of year. The time of year when baby calves are romping in the fields, colts are kicking up their heels, baby birdies are chirp chirp chirping outside windows in the morning. The air is cool and crisp in the morning (perfect hoodie weather, even over my expanding waist line) but warms up enough that I can open and KEEP OPEN the moon roof on my car.

Spring time.

I should love spring time. It signals new beginnings and fresh starts. It also signals spring cleaning but I choose to ignore that sign.

It also signifiy's infestation. A "Sandhills Epidemic" (I dont need the W.H.O. to help ME proclaim an epidemic or pandemic or anything other kind of demic. I can call this one all on my own.)

Snakes in the House.

Yes, MY FREAKING NIGHTMARE COMES TRUE!!!! Let me start right now that I am NOT a part of this club right now. If I was a member of this club I would not be blogging about it because I do not have a laptop and I am sure it is very hard to type on the desktop while I am sitting on the roof.

The second thing you should know is that I am beyond ridiculous in my fear of snakes. I am the idiot who runs into the house when she steps on a stick and thinks it might be a gardner snake. I am also the moron who hyperventilates when she actually DOES see a gardner snake. I have caused major headaches to my Eagle Scout father (who believes in the snake relocation program....while I believe in the run them over with the lawn mower program). I am a paranoid, irrational freak.

I have accepted this and I am ok with it.

Let me now tell you how this particular blog entry came to be....it all started on Wednesday after a great lunch with hubby in town (gotta love Tracey's roast beef...YUMMY!!!). He mentions we need to go to the feed store in town to get some mouse posion.

"For what?" as neurons in my brain start firing at 2 billion a nanosecond.
"In the barn....we have a slight mouse problem in the barn" He does not make eye contact me with.

He knows how I think. He knows my neurons are irrational and immediatly start putting together the worst case scenario.

Mice means the cats didnt survive the winter. No Cats means mice and mice mean SNAKES. Snakes mean that I dont go anywhere near the barn until he can assure me that they are gone. If I do have to walk down to see the horses, you can bet I will have on jeans and my boots. Even if it is 90 degrees out...totally covered.

If you want to know how bad it could get after I actually SEE a snake then please read my previous blog http://mom2pippa.blogspot.com/2010/02/me-snakes-shotgun-repost.html.

Yep...irrational fool. Thats me.

Fast-forward to this morning. Out of bed at 630. Hubby goes to take a shower and I sit down to check facebook only to find out that my ranchy wifey friend has killed 3 snakes in her coat room. Well her dog and honey have. In typical facebook status fashion people commented back...and my fabulous neighbors and friends all made it known that many of them are currently or have been in the past dealing with the same problem.

Snakes in the House.

I talked to Shawn about this a few weeks ago. Conversation went something like this....

"Are you sure we cant get snakes in the house?"
"Yes"
"How sure?"
"Completely sure"
"Completely 190% you would stake your life....."
"Stop....there are no snakes in the house. There never have been and there never will be. "
"Is that 190% sure?"

As I said before, he was in the shower when I logged into facebook so when I heard the water shut off, I positioned myself by the door and informed him of the discovery.

"We cannot get snakes in the house."
"How do you know?"
"Stop."
"There is that one place on the side of the basement."
"Stop."
"Make sure the screen door stays closed."
"Stop."

Hmmm.....my next plan....my dogs. They love me and are always concerned about my mental well being, especially when hubby does not appear to be. My dogs are also snake killers. Well, one is a proven snake killer and the other, well......he is not "proven". I worry about him thinking Mr. 5 foot bull snake is hissing at him because he wants to play. Did I mention he likes to run around with all his trophies of the animals who like to "play" with him? Yep.....heart attack waiting to happen with Husker.

Junior didnt get a single snake last summer. A rational person would think "yeah!!! no snakes by the house!!!". However I am not a rational person. My neurons say "he only has one eye and loves to sleep in the sun...he just missed them."

I would like to go on notice now as saying that all snakes scare the begeesus out of me, but out here we dont have just little gardner snakes. We have water snakes, which are harmless and like the water (Shawn is in charge of sprinklers in the yard), and the bull snakes. Big snakes with permanment attitude problems. They are non-venemous, as all of them are, but still........BAD ATTITUDES. And BIG. Like 5-6 feet big. They do have rattlers down in the southern part of the county but no one has ever seen any out by us. At least I can be irrational about non-venemous snakes right now....I dont know what I would do if I had a serious, life threatening one around.

I will hold tight to my husband not lying to me. His mom wouldnt either....and she grew up here sleeping in the basement. Never saw a snake in the house. I will also consider keeping the proven snake killer in the house at night to patrol and the other one outside to keep them away from the house.

Bring on the skunks! Bring on the procupines! I can handle a coyote on my roof but I cannot handle the idea of snakes. Especially, snakes in the house.

Oh yes....here we go........