Nature

One day last week, I was out for a long run, which took me up a main road into my parents' neighborhood. The road has the backs of homes on either side, and is sometimes bordered by some protected areas for local wildlife. My biggest worry is usually snakes--but on this particular run, I found something even more horrifying.

The half-eaten carcass of a fawn was nestled in the bushes between the sidewalk and the road. I was so shocked that I stopped and stared at it for a good minute or two before it occurred to me that I was seeing bones and innards and, oh, gross. The head and hooves were undisturbed.

A day or two later, the following conversation took place.

Me: Dad!!!

Dad: What?

Me: There's a lizard in the house!!

Dad: Where?!

Me: Entryway!

There I was, peeking out from my corner of the house in my bathrobe and hair towel, gazing down upon a tiny lizard that was nonchalantly hanging out by the Turkish rug in the entryway. I didn't yet have my contacts in, so I had to peer pretty closely--trying, of course, not to scare it under a large piece of furniture--to make sure it was, indeed a lizard, and not, say, a leaf or cat vomit.

Dad came out and knelt down for a closer look. Then he picked it up and took it outside to set it free in the bushes. We like lizards. We don't particularly want them in the house, but we like them.

Fast forward to today. Mom and I made a trip to the craft store and upon our return I said, "Snake!!" Yep, there was a snake slithering across our driveway. We saw it go between my car (in the garage) and Dad's (parked behind mine, on the driveway), but we couldn't tell whether it had veered left into the garage or straight ahead into the bushes of our yard. Both Mom and I have a particular attitude towards snakes--one of "alright, little snakey, you stay far, far away!"

Mom, being a grown-up, got out of the car once we'd pulled into the garage. I sat there in the passenger seat, yelling, "Do you see it?! Is it in the garage?!"

Mom couldn't see it, so I stood up on the edge of the car and jumped heavily down, and proceeded to stomp like a moron into the house. I must have looked like a complete knob, but honestly.

A snake, people.

Dead fawns on the sidewalk and lizards in the house? I can handle all of this. I wasn't overjoyed to see poor Bambi decomposing, and I certainly wouldn't want to wake up with a lizard in my bed, but really, I've got it under control. Introduce the possibility of a snake in the garage, however, and I'm reduced to stomping around (my theory is the vibrations will scare the snake away from me) and being a complete ninny.

A few minutes later, my curiosity got the better of me and I cautiously started exploring the front yard and the garage. I found the little snake curled up in a corner, near my car, and I could see, even from a distance, that it was black with a yellow stripe down it's back--in other words, a harmless garden snake. We have rattlers in this part of the world. I have good reason to be nervous around anything slithery.

Dad came to the rescue again, shooing the errant serpent from the garage.

Needlesssss to ssssssay, I'm watching my sssstep from now on.