I'm now recovered.

At least, enough to explain what happened. It was very traumatic. I walked in the house from swim practice Thursday, and 2 of our cats were sitting and looking somewhat interestedly at something. If you know our cats, that should alarm you. Interested-ness in them is never a good sign. Since they regularly bring us birds and small rodents (yes, IN the house! That's what we get for having a cat door.) I started looking around suspiciously. And then I noticed the snake.

Believe it or not, that's not the traumatic part. This is the third snake that made it inside our house alive. One of the previous snakes that made it inside was about a foot and a half long and was coiled in the middle of my bedroom. (Whenever I tell the story of the black snake in our room, Sarah likes to demonstrate how loudly I screamed when I almost stepped on it, and then how fast I jumped on my bed. Fortunately, that can't be demonstrated over the internet.) So a fairly small garter snake in the living room wasn't a big deal to me.

When it decided to head for our 114 year-old upright piano that's only about an inch of the floor, I got broom duty. We opened the front door (we enter our house through the garage door thankfully, or we probably would have stepped on it) and tried to "encourage" it to leave. Touching it with the broom didn't work well. It just coiled up and stuck it's head up at us. It reminded me of the little "ankle-biter" dogs, who bark ferociously and try to chase you. As if you aren't 10 times bigger than them.

I did get somewhat tired of holding a broom between it and the piano while we decided what to do. Mom called Daddy and he was on his way home from work, so we decided to wait for him. After all, he's the one who yanked a black snake out of our blue bird house (saving the eggs!) with his bare hands.

But then, as if the crazy snake knew we were hoping he'd just sit there, he started challenging the authority of my broom. He slithered directly toward it! I smacked him in the face, and he stopped. He was next to the wall. I was sitting as far away from the wall as possible, but still blocking the path along the wall to the piano with the broom. So he sat there for a few seconds, and then came directly AT ME! Way too quickly for my taste. I really regretted sitting. I jumped up, ran and screamed.

Just then, Daddy came in. He put a paper bag in front of the snake (who apparently was scared by me jumping up and running and was still just sitting there) and then the snake quickly slithered off.... under the piano. He's been under there since Thursday. Yeah, I know. We should try to get him out. We've been pretty busy though. I think we're going to try to get him out tomorrow.

I think my pride is wounded. That tiny little 6-inch snake came right at me... and I was scared to death. *sigh* Why wasn't he scared? I could have stomped on him if I'd been wearing shoes. Hmph.

~Lizzie