I did not play with the greenish snake in high school biology (I think his name was Herbie).
I have no understanding of them as pets.
If there were no more snakes anywhere, I would not cry.
Oh, I know they probably have some important value in the whole scheme of the natural world, I’ll grant you that, but surely there are some creatures just waiting for their chance to move into their niche if snakes were all of a sudden gone. I say, let’s give something else a chance at the mice, rodents, and small mammals of the world.
Even though you’d never know it from the amount of snake nightmares I have, I really don’t see snakes all that often. I haven’t seen a really big one for probably fourteen years, but on the farm I grew up on, we had quite a lot of bull snakes.
One summer there was one with a big lump in his middle (hmmm, wonder what that was. Ugh!) that we kept seeing. My mother swore up and down that it launched up at her from under the propane tank when she was mowing, and tried to get on the riding mower with her. This was not substantiated by other witnesses, and my mother was sometimes prone to emotional outbursts, but with my bias against the slithery beasts, I wholeheartedly agreed that something needed to be done to rid our farm of this terrorist.
I soon got my chance.
One day when I was doing the mowing, I saw him stretched out in the sun. I pondered the fact that I was driving a sort of blender…yeah it would be gross, but it was a snake. It wouldn’t be much different than taking it out with a hoe. Okay, it would be much more disgusting than taking it out with a hoe, but I wouldn’t have to get off the mower to do it.
I set the blade to its lowest setting, threw the mower into high gear and sped over the unsuspecting creature. When I was a good distance away, I stopped and looked back just in time to see it beating a speedy retreat.
I had forgotten to engage the blade.
Well, I did give him a good scare, and since I never saw Ole Lumpy again, I assume he took his terrorist activities elsewhere.
Either that or he just stayed in hiding until he was done digesting.