Spring Surprise!

Ok, you guys need a break from my depression, and this morning, so did I. But I especially needed to run outside and cover my electric lawn mower with a tarp, because, hello! It is spring! It rains! And it started to. (Good news- I did manage to cut my grass a few days ago. I just failed to put the lawn mower back into the shed, because a bunch of crap I had shoved in the shed to protect from the snow that never arrived fell over as I pulled the mower out. And you know what a pain that is.)

So I dashed outside to save my mower, since I have already killed one, and being the distractible give-a-mouse-a-cookie type, I noticed the sandbox I bought last year has completely deteriorated (what do you mean, composite is supposed to last forty years? It didn't make it six months!), and the new one (ok, its a wood vegetable bed, sue me) is still in the car. The plot where it belongs is scattered with the remnants of plastic box, plastic sand toys that got left out, sand, and lots of weeds. So I decided those weeds should go before I put efforts into cleaning the plastic shards up and putting up the new box, even though it was raining. Lightly.

So I reach down, grab a good handful of weeds, and pull.

There is this moment in life when your brain registers in your mind that something is amiss, just before you really understand what is amiss, that sets you at the edge of a chasm of fear and oblivion, because you are at the brink of Unknown Terror. It is that moment that can grab your lungs, squeeze, and creates this really amazing sound, for which we have no truly appropriate word.

Something was amiss.

And it was alive. In my hand.

Grass, weeds, and small northern brown snake took to flight from my palm as I screamed like a little girl.*




Now, you can place that next to your picture of me doing battle with turkeys.


*He was not harmed. I am not afraid of snakes, except for copperheads, so once my brain registered is was, in fact, a snake, I was fine. I made sure he slithered away smoothly and happily into the weeds around the base of my lilacs before not pulling any more weeds and heading back into the house to Do Something Else.