Summer Memories

I hope y’all are not finding my snake stories boring. They do get a little less skin crawly the further back I go in my memories. Maybe because they were not quite as close as this one or it could be they are old enough that they don’t pose a threat anymore. This snake expose' believe it or not does not involve a copperhead but it does contain one of my daughters.

It was a pretty summer day, snakes like summer days. My oldest daughter, an only child at that time, wanted to go out for a walk, she was almost 2, so I loaded her up in the stroller and off we went. We lived kind of back off the main road and there were no other houses around.

We were just chatting to each other you know how you do with young children. Picture it as I remember~~~ me in my young vivacious motherly kind of way, “do you see the pretty bird?” and she in her baby-toddler way of “burd.”
“Oh looky there is a yellow flower.” Said I
“Lawloo.” Said she.

We were just strolling along the dirt road like that for a few minutes. Then I spotted it. It was something weird. I stopped pushing the stroller, but little daughter thought nothing of it as she had a ‘lawloo flw’ in her hand. Humm, what the heck? Then it moved. Before that I could have sworn it was a stick just sticking up out of the ground. But no it wasn’t. I was a big black snake. I thought maybe a water moccasin or maybe a whip snake. I didn’t know other then it was black and huge, it stood up about 2 feet tall which meant it was really long as they cannot totally hold their bodies up on their tail.

Having now realized it was a snake and it had us in its eye, so to speak. I started backing up really slowly. My daddy’s words echoed in my ears, “Don’t move, jut back up real slow. Don’t turn around. Don’t run, just back up nice and slow.” I didn’t want to put it more on guard then it already was. I didn’t say anything-just keep backing up slowly and praying that little daughter didn’t start crying or kicking her little feet like kids normally do.

Finally when I felt like we were well out its way I spun the stroller around and keep an eye over my shoulder all the way back to the house. I don’t’ like coming across snakes. They are creepy and I have seen too many television shows telling me how dangerous they can be. And yet this too was not my first snake encounter.

I know, I know when will it ever end these snake stories or mine. Happy dreams my dear internets.