Every once in a while, my mind takes an extra moment to register something. Oh, what pretty ice crystals, I thought when I saw the shattered glass of my driver’s side window shimmering on the ground after work one night. That guy has a really big thumb when a man parked beside my car and showed me something that I did not want to see that was certainly not his thumb. That looks like a copperhead as I barefooted out the driveway with my dog at dusk one night.
That looks like a copperhead! Stop walking, self!! Stop walking towards it – that is a snake!!
When I finally stopped walking, I was within a few feet of the fat devilish beast. I screamed hysterically. I tried to call Ronnie to come kill the snake, but it sounded more like someone was burning me at the stake and the fire had just started roasting my toes. Unintelligible.
It should really tell you something about my way of reacting to things that Ronnie did not come running. He walked over, saw the snake, laughed at me, and w-a-l-k-e-d to get a shovel.
In the meantime, I was standing guard, making sure that poisonous fiend that had encroached on my yard where my children play didn’t get away before Ronnie could end its hideous existence.
When Ronnie finally got back wearing heavy work books and wielding a shovel, he assessed the situation carefully before striking with the shovel.
He missed the head and hit the snake in such a way as to pin it down, but it was still able to hiss and fight violently. Ronnie quickly (there’s a nice change) realized he couldn’t pick the shovel up to try again as he was now in danger of being bitten. He told me to run to the garage to get another shovel.
Well, I ran. I can’t exactly say where I ran, but I ran fast. Kind of like one of those cartoons that shows the dotted line that is the path a silly character takes to get from point A to B. My line would have charted loops and curves as I apparently forgot where our garage was located.
“MANDY!” Ronnie yelled to refocus me. “The garage! Get the shovel!” That snake was struggling like crazy. He barely had it.
I retrieved the shovel, but then I experienced another problem. I couldn’t physically make myself get close enough to him to hand it to him. I mean, a shovel is what? only five feet long, or so, right? I literally could not force myself to hand it to him.
I was standing about ten feet away, crying, doing this strange kind of dance that I can only really compare to the pee-pee dance I did as a kid when I told my parents I had to go and the next rest area was twenty miles away and when we finally got there all the stalls were full and all the sinks’ faucets were running and there was a rushing waterfall and everyone was chanting “pee-pee-pee-pee-pee….”
Anyways, the snake was fighting, Ronnie was yelling at me, I was dancing, the dog was watching. I finally danced my way over to my husband holding the shovel parallel to the ground with my arm stretched as far as I could reach. Ronnie reached as far as he could while still holding the snake to the ground. He brushed the tip of it a few times with his fingers, and then he finally got it.
As soon as it was in his hands, I bolted.
Ronnie did the deed. No more snake. Once the danger passed, he went from being a little perturbed with me (I still don’t understand why) to laughing hysterically (once again, I don’t get it – we could have died out there!).
In my defense, at least this one was poisonous. That’s not always the case when I freak out over things. Something just happens to me. It’s like I don’t know myself for a moment. There’s just something about snakes…
…and frogs.
