365

The picture I mentioned in the last post.  Can you tell what it is?

A couple of stars. I need a darker night to try this again!

Well, today was interesting.  Jay and I went outside in the 74 degree weather to re-pot my bush, and put the porch together.  Jay was standing on the side walk while I was moving rocks around when I heard him let out a startled "Oh!" There was a snake in the wood chips by the front walk!   My first reaction was to throw the rock I had in my hands on top of the damn thing.  I then went ahead and tossed the rest of them on top as hard as I could and stomped on them.  I figured that if the kids moved the rocks and saw a dead snake they'd freak out, so I started moving the rocks out of the way...and of course using one of the tools in the yard to move the last one just in case.  Since the snake was on top of the soft wood chips, not even my stomping on it killed it.  Jay grabbed the shovel and our compost bucket and I caught the snake and slammed the lid down.  My first thought was to call animal control.  I'm not in the habit of killing things once immediate danger is over, and I'm not going to open the lid to mess with the thing either...I'm not an idiot!  When Jay got off the phone with animal control I knew he was going to tell me something I wasn't going to like.  He gets this funny look on his face, and I can just tell. The guy says to let it go in the woods.  Um...the woods are a hundred feet from my house, and it's no garter snake.  This stupid thing is a baby rattler, and they bite.  It won't kill you, but the venom will eat away the muscle, and it hurts like hell.  I know from experience. 
I decided to wait and think over my options.  I really didn't like the idea of opening the bucket and having my face right there.  Poisonous snakes know that they are bad asses, and they don't run away when they are mad...they chase you.  I finally decided how we were going to handle the situation, so we headed off towards the wooded area with an edger (which just looks like a straightened out hoe) and the idea that we'd put the bucket on it's side, use the edger to pop the lid off, and run like hell, and just in case the damn thing decided to come at me, I would cut it in half with my garden tool.  It wouldn't be the first time I'd killed an animal that was after me with nasty intentions.  Sure enough, when the snake came out of the bucket, it stood up a few inches and after starting in the opposite direction, it started to meander in our direction.  Jay and I beat it out of there, warning a neighbor about it's presence on the way back home.  It was a small snake, but I've seen some nasty and aggressive baby snakes.  The whole thing had me a little agitated.  Otherwise I'd be posting a picture of it right now.  I didn't even think about the camera until after it was all over.