TheBanyanTree: The Snake Story

[Jeri Xiques]

My friend Billie Nan has a ranch around the corner from me.  They keep some cows and donkeys, as well as a few dogs and several cats.  French doors lead from the family room onto a lovely patio and wonderful swimming pool.

A mutual friend of ours asked me if I had talked to Billie Nan in the last few days.  I hadn't, so Sarah proceeded to tell me about Billie Nan's recent experience with a Copperhead.

One room of her house is pretty much devoted to Billie Nan's cats.  Concrete floor, climbing towers, indestructable furniture, etc.  One end of the room opens to the carport and connects to the "family" part of the house on the other end.  She often leaves the carport door open for fresh air and so the cats can go in and out.  One day she heard the cats making a fuss out in their room, and upon investigation, she discovered a Copperhead snake in there! 

She ran to get her husband, but when he arrived, the snake was nowhere to be found!!  Well.  Let me tell you!!  That would have done it for me.  I would have left the house and not returned until that monster had been made into a belt!!   But not to worry.  Just a little while later they found Mr. Copperhead doing the backstroke in the swimming pool.  Hubby fished him out and dispatched him most promptly to the Big Snakepit in the sky! 

Billie Nan surmises that the snake had entered the house through the exterior door to the cat room which she had left open, then after terrifying the cats, it must have slithered into the kitchen, through the family room, then out onto the patio, ultimately sliding into the pool.  Guess he thought he was due for a nice, relaxing swim.  We are just glad none of Billie Nan's young grandkids were at the house that day!!

Sarah also told me that a few days before, Billie Nan had found a snake skin in the front yard that she described as "this big," stretching her arms out wide.  Just the skin...no body.  Makes me wonder if the Copperhead they caught was the former occupant of the skin or if it was a different one.  

It was at Billie Nan's house that I first heard a pack of coyotes howling on a bright moonlit evening...shiver!!!  That's one spooky sound, I'll tellya!  It was enough to make me rush right home and round up all my furkids and lock them in the house, where they spend every night now.  

Wow!!  If it's not coyotes, it's snakes!!!  Guess that's what comes with living the "peaceful" life in the country!  Did I mention there are also foxes in the area, and another neighbor recently spotted a bobcat?

Jeri...not much of a pioneer woman