Snaaaake!

Well, I haven't posted in forever, and I have tons of pictures to format and load onto the site. We've been rather busy searching for a place to live and packing up our stuff, so I haven't had too much time to work on the blog. I promise a post with lots of cute pictures in the near future. In the meantime, I have to share the details of finding a snake in the house tonight.

So we had finished up dinner and I had stripped Ellie down for her bath. Daddy has her in her arms, heading upstairs, when he suddenly backs up and says "There's a snake!" I look over, thinking he's either joking or mistaken, but nope - sure enough there is a snake at the bottom of our stairs. It was a small snake so I was pretty calm and I offered to go get an oven mitt and take it outside. Off I go to get the mitt and I hear "Are there copperheads in this area? I think it looks like a copperhead." GREAT! Oh, there's more.. then I hear "if that's a copperhead baby, then there's probably a nest around here." I couldn't be more overjoyed! Just what I wanted to hear!

I know next to nothing about snakes. I know poisonous snakes have diamond shaped heads, but when faced with a snake on the loose (a fairly active one at that!) it's a little difficult to tell and saying "hey mister snake, please hold still and let me examine the shape of your head" doesn't work. With the idea that this might in fact be a dangerous snake things get a bit more interesting. Daddy puts Ellie over in her high chair (not in anything where her feet could reach the ground!). And after much discussion, we decide I'll pick up the snake and put it in a plastic ziploc bag. This sounds easy. It is not.

I've seen plenty of nature shows where they use a stick to hold the snake and gently, quickly, firmly grab the snake just behind the head. It doesn't work that way in real life. I thought I'd give that a try, and my bravery went out the window. I've never been afraid of an animal in my life. I have to say, it shocked me. I didn't even realize I was scared of this tiny little snake until I reached out for it. So, plan B - the scoop it into a baggy method.

I'm at the ready, oven mitt on, plastic baggy open ... How do you pick up a wriggly snake without squashing it? Or alternatively, without getting bitten? Well, it helps to have your man standing a slight distance away dancing around like he's about to pee his pants, and adding an "eeeek" or an "aaagh" every time you are about to grab it. I manage a couple of times to hold the snake in place with the mitt, but the fact that I have to scoop it up in what now seems like a very thin and flimsy plastic baggy with my bare hand was getting to me. Eventually though, after several tries, I bite the bullet, hold the baggy open on the floor, and slowly paw the snake into it with my gloved hand. I get him securely zipped up, double-bag him, put him in the fridge (to slow him down some) and run to look on the internet to see what kind of snake he is and who I should call.

After my heroic snake catching act, I was a bit let down to find that it was just a little brown snake. On the other hand, it was an adult brown snake as opposed to a baby any-other-kind-of snake, which is a relief because the mere thought of a whole nest of baby snakes, poisonous or not is freaking me out. Let's just say I'm wearing my slippers from now on.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, we decided to release the little guy - outside, across the street, far away from our house.

I didn't get a picture of our snake, but it looked just like this: