A Thursday Morning

**Warning: The following post may not be suitable for all bloggers.**

It was a beautiful day. I got the older two kids off to school and my 3 little girls wanted to play outside. Bryn played in the swing and I pushed her for a few minutes, then headed inside to clean the kitchen. I left the backdoor open to hear the girls playing and to enjoy the cool breeze. They were so cute playing together- I had a hard time getting the dishes done. After about an hour they were ready to come in for a snack. I got them settled in front of Nick Jr.

The missionaries stopped by to help me move a mirror and as they walked home (they live behind us), Elder Hagge said, "Hey, there's a snake." me: "WHAT? Are you kidding? Oh my gosh!" It was huge! Coiled up in the dirt by the old swing set. I swung at it with a board and missed, of course. So it struck at us and scurried up the closest tree. (The dirt is from the new sewer line we dug last Saturday for our new bathroom.) Since it was near the sewer line and it had some rain water in it, I thought it might be a water moccasin. I ran in the house and looked at pictures online to rule out a king snake and to see pics of water moccasins. The missionaries kept an eye on him- he was still coiled up in the tree biting at us.


I found one picture that said water moccasin that looked like him. So we came up with a plan to kill him.

Here's our first attempt:

Okay so that didn't work. We didn't give up. It was freaking me out that he was so big and that my girls were out there less than an hour before, playing. We prepared for our second attempt:

We weren't about to give up. Whether or not it was venemous, didn't matter to me. All snakes can bite. I didn't want to risk letting him go and letting there be a possibility that he could bite one of my kids.

Unfortunately, it got a little intense, so I wasn't able to video the climax of the ordeal. I was a little busy with a shovel, so I couldn't hold the camera. I'm sure you're not too disappointed, right?

Finally, success! The serpent is no longer. Our third or fourth attempt worked, and now we await Johnny's arrival to determine what kind it was...

That was pretty gruesome, huh? Eww! At the time, when all the adrenaline was rushing, I couldn't care less- I just thought the only good snake was a dead one, or a caged one at the zoo.

Johnny finally came home and said the snake was a... drumroll please... nonvenemous black rat snake. :( Well, I looked it up and he's right. I sort of feel bad, but I don't like to take chances. I wanted to be sure the backyard was safe.