FYI – Atlanta has snakes, too

I mentioned in a previous post that I am scared of snakes. I know there are snakes in nearly all parts of the southeastern US. There are some big snakes and there are some even bigger ones. I was hoping to not see any in Atlanta.

After seeing the one on Mama’s porch a couple of months ago, Justin mentioned that there was a dead one in the road in front of our house in Atlanta and it was the largest snake he has seen in person in a while – about four feet (definitely not the biggest one ever, but not tiny, either). I was very scared after hearing that. Where did this ginormous monster come from? Luckily, it was gone before I arrived that Friday evening.

Last Saturday afternoon, the plan was for me to mow the yard and Justin was going to edge and use the weed eater. He went inside for a second and I began mowing. I had barely made one pass in the yard and I saw IT! IT was slithering into the bushes! I squealed and then decided I was hot stuff with that lawn mower, so I tried to chase it down. I should mention that we have a push mower, so me not abandoning the mower and running to the tallest object I could climb was a big deal for me. I pushed that mower into those bushes and kept trying to chop the snake into tiny pieces. Lucky for the snake, but not so lucky for me, the blade on the mower was set too high, so I doubt I could have killed him even if I had gotten a direct hit. Geez he was fast!

I gave up after a minute and ran (carefully) into to house and yelled for Justin. He ran to the storage room to grab a shovel and went to work. He plunged that shovel into the snake-hording bush and all the ones nearby. He searched for it for a while and eventually gave up. In the meantime, I kept mowing. Justin had to stand guard near the bushes and keep the shovel handy in case the snake decided to make another appearance. It didn’t, naturally.

Every time I left the house after that, I had to quickly stomp to the car. Justin asked me what was up with the “marching” to the car and I told him that was to scare the snake.

When I told him the snake was probably about eight inches long and the diameter of a pencil, Justin said my description of this massive snake was a little exaggerated.

On a positive note, the weather in Atlanta this weekend was fabulous! It was breezy and cool enough that we opened a few windows and let in some fresh air. I couldn’t believe how wonderful the weather was. After mowing, we sat out on the back patio and just relaxed. It was nice.