Killer

That's right, I am a certified killer now. I killed my first copperhead snake yesterday. It went a little something like this:

I woke up to the sound of the closet door opening and Wes putting on his tennis shoes. I was thinking to myself "What the heck is going on and what time is it?" I guess I made a somewhat coherent noise because Wes then tells me that there is a snake in the yard and he is going to kill it. I asked if the snake had bothered him or the dogs and he told me no, so I rolled over to go back to sleep. Unfortunately he let the dogs in the room and they had other plans that did not involve sleeping. So I laid in the bed with them for what felt like forever and I never heard Wes come back in.

So I got up, got dressed and went outside to see how the progress was going. Well, it wasn't going. He was still standing on the porch looking at the spot he said the snake went into. After some internal (and maybe a little external) head shaking I got some pine cones and threw them at the area to see if I could get the snake to surface. It didn't. So I was convinced that it had escaped back into the woods. Well, there was this rope that was hooked to one of the trees behind our house and I was tired of looking at it. I guess the people before us used it to tie their dog up or something. I decided I was going to unhook it from the tree and get rid of it. Most of the rope was covered up under some pine straw and dirt since it had been out there so long. To unhook it I had to take a few steps into the woods right about where Wes swore this snake was. I told him to watch out for me and proceeded to walk in there against his advice. I figured that since I had thrown stuff and also poked around with the garden hoe that the snake was long gone.

I got the rope unhooked and walked back out and started pulling to rope out. I am glad that Wes was being brave and standing close by because after about 3 pulls he said "There it is". And sure enough the snake had come out with the rope. I didn't see it at first and probably would have kept pulling and ended up pulling the snake right up into my hand if it hadn't been for Wes. So I grabbed the hoe and started whacking the snake. After just a couple of whacks I thought I had cut the thing in half, but Wes informed me that what I thought was the snakes insides was really just his tail. I didn't realize that young copperheads have a greenish-yellow tail, but they do. So I gave it a couple of more good whacks and even Wes got in on the fun.

So the moral of the story is that not all snakes run away when you start poking the pine straw and you always need to wear your glasses outside so you can see snakes when you are pulling ropes out of the ground. Oh, and I probably shouldn't have been wearing flip flops to go snake hunting!

Here are a couple of pictures. They are a little out of focus (Wes took the pictures, mine would have been tons better! Just kidding) but you can see the head of the snake on the left and half the body on the right.