After spending about an hour on the computer yesterday afternoon, I decided it was time for a break. As I walked out of the bedroom, I noticed the long black, snake-like tail of something across the floor just in front of the door. For a split second I thought to myself, “Damn toys.” I almost reached down, grabbed it and threw it out from the middle of the floor. Then it dawned on me. My grandson has a bright green rubber snake, not a black one! I called out, “Dad, I think we have a snake in the house!” He says, “Really? Where?” I told him and as he came to look, the snake started moving. It slithered across the shelves by the washing machine and then went behind it.

Great. It’s not bad enough this snake found a way into the house but now he’s under the dang washing machine. I wasn’t worried that it was a poisonous snake. I was pretty sure it was just a black rat snake. We’ve had them before around the yard near the house so we figured he came from under the house. No wonder we haven’t heard mice in the wall for quite some time. They are good for that, you know. What the cats don’t catch, the snakes do! I wondered, how will we get him out of the house? I texted my son and told him we needed help. Dad tried to chase the snake out, but it wasn’t cooperating. My son finally showed up and the two of them tried to persuade that poor snake to come out so C.F. could capture it and put it outside. [We don’t kill things like half the other people that live out here in the country. Seems like if it moves rednecks want to kill it, no matter what it is!]

Of course, my grandson was curious and wanted to see what was going on. He came in to watch and pretty soon that snake slithered out from under the washing machine and headed towards D.M.! I wasn’t in the room at the time, but S.R. said he wasn’t too thrilled about that snake coming toward him so she snatched him up and got him out of the line of fire. Turns out, the snake was just headed towards the hole that he came in from. We plugged up the hole, hopefully keeping snakes and other critters….spiders….from coming in.

Snakes don’t really bother me much as long as I know it’s there. I wasn’t too thrilled about this guy being in the house though, wondering if it would crawl into bed with me some night or slither out from under the couch and scare the daylights out of someone! I didn’t want him to get so hungry he would go after the ferret either! Of course, if a snake slithered into the ferret cage and managed to eat the ferret, it would then be too fat to get out of the cage! I’m sure that the ferret would put up one heck of a fight too.

So, the snake slithered in and then it slithered back out. No harm, no foul, and it lived happily ever after.