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Bugging Out
I realize all parts of the United States have bugs and critters and things I would rather not encounter on a daily basis. And maybe where we lived in Virginia prior to moving to North Carolina was just so crammed with people, there was no where for the bugs and other creatures to come into my sight.
But since living here for two years, we have encountered more snakes than I ever want to see in my life. And we have picked more ticks off of our kids that I am now an expert. One tip? Use a little rubbing alcohol to remove a tick that is really stuck. They tend to let go really fast with that stuff.
Each year our backyard seems to get a resident snake. This year, it was a green looking snake that was hopefully chased away. We promptly spread some “snake-away” stuff you can purchase at Home Depot and I am putting all my faith in that product.
But since the snake encounter, the girls are fascinated with snakes. They want to see pictures in books and on the Internet. They want to know what they eat and where they sleep. I was afraid the pictures would lead to nightmares night after night. Nope. Just nightmares for me.
If you have any snake or other creature stories, feel free to share them in the comments, I would love to commiserate with you…
Amy appears every Wednesday on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Amy at A Family Story.
Amy Williamson
Amy is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Wednesday.
She lives in Holly Springs with her two daughters, a four-year old aspiring High School Musical character and a two-year old who believes every day should start at 5 a.m. Amy and her husband met while attending Virginia Tech and relocated here two years ago from Virginia to escape the traffic and intermittent snow. Amy works in finance and her husband is a real estate agent. Amy enjoys playing bassoon for the Holly Springs Community Band and can often be found in her garage practicing and scaring off the neighborhood cats.
Comments
I love snakes! Ticks, however, are completely vile. Snakes are rarely harmful, except for the easily identified copperhead, or a water moccasin if you are near water, you're likely safe around here with snakes. Feel good that the environment is a healthy one if snakes can survive since reptiles tend to die off soon when the environment is toxic. I'm with your fascinated girls, snakes are cool! Just think of snakes as unfeathered birds. It's a bit of a reach, but Birds are nice, right? But I will never learn to appreciate chiggers or ticks. ugh.
Here's the beginning of the story...but for best results, click on this link...the pictures make it priceless:
http://www.liveandletdi.com/my_weblog/2007/05/the_snake_pit.html
I walked into our weekend house on Saturday, leaving my husband on the phone in the car and the children still extricating themselves from the various cords and electronic devices they needed to fill the excruciating 2.5 hour drive. I opened the back sliding glass door to take a big cleansing breath and take in the beauty and peace of the water. As I walked by a planter (with a fake plant in it, natch, since I can't sustain a real plant at the home I live in full time), I decided to check if there was a key in there since it was one of my hiding places. I pulled up the fake moss surrounding the plant and saw something orange-ish...and it slithered!!!! I screamed and ran back out. Then I came back and took a picture. Then my husband yelled at me for going back out there with my camera.
Anyway, the purpose of the picture was to determine if it was a dangerous snake or not. If you look carefully, you can see the orange-ish color and the markings. This meant nothing to us, so we called our friend Danny to come over and help us. When I jumped and screamed at first, I didn't look closely because I was too startled. Then when I looked at this picture, I saw anaconda with a body as big as my arm curled up and waiting to strike from the seemingly innocuous planter. Danny came in with his gun, prepared to shoot it. But the planter was in a corner, backed by concrete walls, so Danny figured it wouldn't be wise to take a chance on the bullet ricocheting and killing one of us. THAT would sure put a damper on my birthday weekend!!!
We called Animal Control and they promised to send someone. So we took turns keeping watch from a chair by the sliding glass door. Text messages were flying with my friends, including Andrea who encouragingly texted, "F*** the planter! Shoot it!!!"
After a couple hours, one of Brevard County's finest was at our door. I'm showing him my picture on my laptop...he didn't even flinch...just walked out there, reached his hand in and...well, tales of the snake's size may have been slightly exaggerated due to the clarity of my zoomed-in photograph. We were informed that it was a harmless red rat snake...I'm sorry, but a critter that includes BOTH "rat" and "snake" in its name is not something I want to be too close to.
When we moved here from the Philadelphia area, I, too, had no clue that we'd have snakes, lizards, frogs, and the scariest looking bugs right outside our front door. I have to say that I find them all creepy. If I had to choose what scares me the most, it would be spiders. We have had at least two black widows inside of our house. Ewww.
This story is really gross. My husband left his old sneakers out in the garage. Luckily, we had gotten into the habit of checking our shoes for creepy bugs before we put them on. Well inside of his sneaker was some kind of egg. When he got it out of his sneaker, it cracked open, and the gewwey matter that was inside was pulsating. He was SO FREAKED OUT by this. I never looked but I believe him because he was literally queasy from what he saw.
We also had a funny incident. My parents were driving on 95 north, heading back to PA, when a frog jumped on the stearing wheel. My mom was so scared she almost peed her pants. She said they litterally came really close to driving off the road.
I come from Florida. Let's just say the tropical air grows everything bigger. We went to a cabin in the NC mountains one time with my in-laws. We found a garden snake inside (probably trying to get warm). Who got the snake out of the house? My mother-in-law (also from Florida) and me. My husband and his dad were hiding (though they claimed to be unloading the car).