(Only those of you who read Pat McManus, or whose husbands read Pat McManus, can appreciate that title.)

We’ve had lots of exciting things going on since we got home, not the least of which is our snakes. Yes, snakes. In the plural. The day we got home the kids came running madly into the house declaring there was a snake in the pond. I went to investigate and, sure enough, there was a snake in the pond. A dead snake. A little snake tale was hanging out from underneath a rock, floating in the water. I jabbed it a few times with a stick and determined that it was, indeed, lifeless. What kind of a dopey snake crawls into a pond and drowns itself?! I mean, was it suicidal??? Just couldn’t cope with this cruel world anymore, or what? Weird. Anyway, nobody else was willing to touch the thing, so Sam reached in and yanked it out of the pond for me. We disposed of it and thought that was that.

In the past two or three days since then there have been two or three additional snake sightings, all in or around the pond. They’ve all been 12-18” long; just little guys. I’m not sure what kind they are, but I’m fairly certain they’re harmless. They don’t have any rattles, anyway. ;-) And they apparently like to swim, however, they’re not all very adept at it. At least that first one wasn’t. James killed another one yesterday then went out and bought some snake repellant. Can you imagine?! Who ever heard of such a thing?! Ha! Makes me think of the Batman movie (the only one we’ve ever seen is the old Batman—you know, with Adam West—“Blam!” “Ka-Pow!” “Zap!”) where a shark latches on to Batman’s leg and Robin spends the next several minutes sorting through their defensive sprays (octopus repellant, stingray repellant, jellyfish repellant) until he finally locates the trusty shark repellant, sprays the beast, and watches it drop back into the ocean and then explode. (They just don’t make movies like that anymore. Ha!) Anyway, we have had one unverified snake sighting (they are classified as unverified unless an adult gets there in time to see it, too) since the repellant was used, so we’ll see how the next few days go. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually feel kind of sorry for the little guys. If I knew them to be dangerous I wouldn’t, but as far as I know they’re perfectly harmless. I couldn’t say they’re cute, but I think it’s kind of neat to have a little, tiny snake swim across our little, tiny pond every now and then. (I saw one do that yesterday—it was cool!) If I knew that we had just one little snake I would try to make James leave him alone, but the thought of a whole crop of them out there doesn’t set well with me. Anyway, I’ll keep you updated. The kids think it’s all a great adventure and we hear screams of “SNAKE!” several times throughout the day. Often it’s nothing more than a caterpillar that caught them off guard, but they’re definitely on the look out!