Let's talk about something else ...

This is Texas.

It's almost summertime.

Thus it was inevitable ...

I saw a snake today.

Sigh.

I hate snakes.

Every day I walk, I'm always reeeeeeeeeeeally happy when the dogs come along.  

I always encourage them to go ahead of me.  You know.  So the snakes will get them ... and not me.

And every day I walk, I'm praying, "Lord, please ... no snakes.  Please.  Just no snakes."  

But now that the weather is warmer ... well ... I think I'm going to have to make my peace with it.  

There are snakes out there.  

Today my snake sensor was on high alert, even before the big fat brown lizard nearly scared the heartbeat right out of me.  Gus was walking ahead of me, but something made me stop, mid-stride.  

Yep.

  A snake.  Right where I would have put my foot down.  Not very big.  Maybe six inches long.  

But that is plenty big enough, thank you very much. 

Let's test your Snake Sensor ...

Can you see it???

  Yes?  No?

Look closely ... and think patterns.

The arrow is pointing at the head; the body extends to the right from there.  Pretty good camouflage, isn't it?  YOWZA.  It's a copperhead.  You can't take your eyes off them, or they disappear.  Not because they're gone, but because they blend in.

I backed up and waited for it to GO AWAY.  And Gus walked right over it to come back to me.  

And then Raider walked right over it.  Totally oblivious.  Both of them.

Such good dogs.

So anyway, I did the obvious thing ... I threw a stick at the snake, hoping it would crawl away.  Which it didn't.  So I threw another stick at it, hoping it would slither away.  Which it didn't.  

Stupid snake.

Raider came back, and decided to just lay down about 12 inches away from the snake.

It clearly had no plans to move.  

Which is good, I guess ... at least it didn't chase me :o)

I did the next obvious thing ... went back the other way.  Never mind that I was 3/4 of the way around the property.  

Tonight at dinner, Nathan and Aaron informed me that they saw some snake eggs in a hole in the treeline!  Ugh.  So Nate took me to see them ... and we scrambled them.  

Well ... okay, Nathan scrambled them.  I stood ten feet away.  And tried not to shriek.  

I'm just going to think about pretty flowers now.