Adventures with snakes, the prequel

In addition to the run in I had with snakes earlier this week, we've had a couple of other close encounters of the slithery kind that have perpetuated my fear of SNAKES(!).

A few years ago in the winter, we were sitting down to eat dinner. Logan and I were already at the table, Aidan was in the bathroom washing his hands, and Adam was bringing our food to the table. As Adam walks over to the table, he sees what he initially thinks is a toy snake, on the floor next to Logan's chair. You can see where this is going, right? NOT A TOY! A frickin' REAL SNAKE had wondered into our warm house through our patio door which we'd inadvertently left slightly ajar for who knows how long.

I immediately jumped up in my chair screaming and crying like a crazy person. I yelled to Aidan to stay in the bathroom and close the door, while Adam frantically tried to figure out what to use to get the snake out. I think Logan was 2 at the time so he was buckled into his booster chair, but somehow I managed to turn his chair away from the snake.  Oddly, despite my hysteria, Logan turned around and waved to the snake. I probably would have found it cute, if I hadn't been freaking out so bad.

Fortunately the snake was very lethargic since it was winter, so it didn't go far while Adam found they boys' toy bug net to corral the snake outside. He ended up killing it (I begged him to) because we didn't know whether it was poisonous. Plus, I didn't want him to come back and bring all his snake friends with him. Yes, I actually said that to Adam.

Turns out it was an eastern kingsnake, so not poisonous, but I'm not any less freaked out that it was IN.OUR.HOUSE!

Eastern Kingsnake (source)

I'm not even sure I finished dinner. Instead I pulled all the cushions of the couches, had Adam lift up each couch, and I pulled back all the covers on every single bed before I was convinced that there were no more snake surprises waiting for me.

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The next run-in with snakes at our house fortunately wasn't by me. We were having our exterior house painted and gutters cleaned a couple of springs ago. One of the painters was at the top of his ladder cleaning out the gutters on our two-story house when a snake jumped out and scared him so bad that he literally almost fell off the ladder. His supervisor said he's never seen a man come down off a ladder so quickly. They never finished cleaning the gutters (understandable) and it took us until this winter to finally get someone to finish cleaning them (bad homeowners!).

The irony is that I was talking to the painters that very morning about them having to leave the front door open while the paint on it dried (it was going from blue to red so they needed to do several coats). I said I was worried that a snake may wonder into the house based on my previous experience of leaving doors open and snakes wondering in. He basically looked at me like I was crazy for being so paranoid and said he seriously doubted a snake would come anywhere near them or the house. Famous last words...

But yeah, I totally worried that we had snakes in our attic that got in from the gutters. (I'm still hoping we don't—I never actually checked).

BTW, the snake in the gutter escaped so fast down the downspout and out of the yard that the painter never got a good look at what kind it was. Not sure if copperheads are good climbers or not, but we're kind of assuming (hoping) it was "just" a black snake.

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I wouldn't be surprised if googling snakes for this post give me more nightmares tonight. Maybe I need therapy...