Give me a blessed country break.
Now that the holidays have come and gone, I have resumed our weekly tea here with the neighbor-ladies. We spent a nice afternoon last week talking about Christmas and New Year's and working on our first craft project (little crystal snowmen ornaments). And then we all got to talking about snakes.
I told the ladies about my episode with the little garden snake all curled up by the side door of our garage, and my successful attempt to move the snake with a well-aimed spritz from a can of wasp spray. Some of the ladies cringed at that one... after all, those little green garden snakes are harmless and besides, they eat the lizards. Well, pardon me, but I'd rather have an army of lizards out in the yard than one garden snake.
One of the ladies told us that she has had two 'chicken snakes' living in her barn for years now. Each snake gets bigger and longer as time goes on, and the barn stays completely free of field mice. One of her resident snakes is over six feet long now, which is huge for a chicken snake, but I guess if one has a constant and never-ending diet of mice, that sort of snake will continue to grow.
And how does this neighbor dispose of unwanted garden snakes in her flower beds? Not a problem... she just picks them up and relocates them. Picks them up? With one's fingers? Well of course. I repeat: give me a blessed country break. K calmly told me that if I ever had a problem with a snake I should just call her and she'd take care of it. (Is her middle name Steve Irwin?)
As I was cleaning up after that day's tea party, I kept looking behind me and imagining a six-foot long chicken snake slithering out of the dining room. It took a good long while for me to get to sleep that night.
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