snakes... eeyyyywwwwwwww

The snake incident at my kids' school yesterday brought up a snake memory. Luckily, I only have one of those! When I was little we lived in Bedford in Upstate NY. There were rock walls all around the property and we had a pretty rock garden on the slope of a small hill in back of the house that we could see from the kitchen. It was tiered with the rocks that were dug up when the house was built, and every year my Mom would replant with all the annuals she loved. One day, while she was showing me some of the flowers she'd chosen, a litte garter snake poked its head out from between the rocks in one of the tiers to say hello. Yeesh, who'd think a woman could scream that loud?! She called the police (because that's what any non-country person would do, right?) and the officer promptly arrived. Here's the kicker. We were standing right behind him while he aimed and shot that little snakes head off. At the time, I remember thinking 'wow, that was going a little overboard', hehe! Regardless of that early drama, I prefer a snake-free school, home and yard and probably would have done just as my mother did! Yuck.