snake

All along I've been treating this blog as a place to talk about my true feelings on this widow path, a place where I could unload and vent and recap and maintain at least a slight hold on my sanity because so very often I feel like I'm going under and I might not survive. But now I know it's not the safe space I thought it was and I will make changes accordingly.

So let me tell you about what happened today.

Yesterday, instead of hanging out in the house with my renter (who wasn't going in to work until 4pm) I went to a movie and then grocery shopping and then driving around aimlessly until the coast was clear.

Today I decided that was stupid so I forced myself to stay home all day and do what I usually like to do on a Saturday - swim.

All was going well, I made myself some lunch, went in the pool a couple of times and then was reading on my chair when I happened to look over at the pool and saw this

Yes, that's a snake...in my pool! Yikes!!

The only other time there's been a snake in the pool (2 summers ago, I think) all I did was shout "SNAKE!" and my devoted husband came out and scooped him up and took him far away from me. I thought that was a perfect solution.

So, I have to admit, I've worried about this for 6 months, what was I going to do if/when the snake situation happened again and I don't have a devoted husband to rescue me?

Just last weekend I even asked a friend how he felt about snake removal just to see if there was someone I could call. I already knew I couldn't count on the lawn guy, he'd told me he screamed like a little girl at the sight of a snake.

But now that I was faced with it, I knew I couldn't bother someone else with my problem so the only person that was going to rescue me, was me.

My first concern was Charlie. It was just a little snake but I worried that if I dropped it and Charlie startled it, the bite could cause her harm and I couldn't deal with that. So I herded her in the house and shut the door. She watched through the window and gave me moral support.

At first I tried the pool net by itself but the short handle meant I was entirely too close to the snake for comfort so I attached the net to the long handle, keeping in mind Taz's concerns that the end of the long handle is old and broken and very sharp. I managed to attach the pool net without too much blood shed and started circling the pool to find the snake who was hiding by now.

My neighbor, the one who kissed me back in January, had been hanging out in his pool all day, staring at me from time to time, said hi and asked how I was so I told him I was good but there was a snake in my pool. He laughed and turned away. Not that I would have accepted his help anyway but it would have been nice if he'd offered. Ok, well back to me.

It took a few tries, snakes do not like being scooped up - who knew? - but I finally got the little sucker. I had already opened both of the screen doors so that I could make a quick getaway before the damned snake slithered up the handle and onto my arm. I ran out the door and plopped the snake over the fence into the backyard of the empty vacation house next to me. I *wanted* to dump the snake into the pool of my unhelpful next door neighbor but I managed to refrain myself. I also managed to do all of this without screaming, not even once.

So there, I did it. I managed to deal with a snake (yucky!) all by myself...without a man. Aren't I a brave, strong, independent woman?

Truth be told, I'd rather have a man.