Uninvited Guest!!

On graduation day we had an uninvited guest show up!!

Some of the girls were outside preparing for the party when one ran in saying that a snake was crawling towards the stack of chairs.

Of course we all had to go outside and check it out!!  Lo and behold, he slithered his little (HUGE) self into the stack of chairs.

Well, around these parts, we kinda like snakes.  Well, the ones that won't kill ya if they bite ya!!  They eat mice and I do NOT like mice!!

So we thought we would just convince him to keep on moving and head back into the woods.  So we started kindly persuading him.  Now, at this point we could not really see him well to identify him, but by the markings we thought he was either a rat snake (good guy) or rattlesnake (bad guy).  That being the case, we came armed with a hoe and a shotgun.  The hoe was to push him out from the chairs and the gun was in case he was of the bad guy variety!!

As we (Farmer Willie and his brother Gun Slinger) went through the chairs, the little (HUGE) guy got a little spooked and decided that the best place to be was in those chairs.

He did come out once and try to bite Farmer Willie, but FW was quick footed and in a brilliant display of agility, hopped out of the way!

Fast forward about 15 minutes and we finally proceeded to throw all of the chairs to the side and FINALLY nail down our slithering friend.  We then determined that we thought he was a good guy and we would rather get him to go back into the woods as opposed to kill him.

Now keep in mind that all of this is happening about two hours before the guests arrive!  It totally knocks me off of my planned schedule!!  But hey, I dealt with it :)

Okay, so imagine 75 chairs thrown all over the yard and the little (HUGE) guy still not going away.  Oh, you might also imagine the eight pairs of eyes stuck to the glass windows watching and the occasional shriek we here from inside the house.

Because of his stubbornness, it is finally determined that we are going to have to shoot him.  I mean, what kind of graduation would it be if he hung around and nibbled on our guests ankles??!!

So Gun Slinger and Farmer Willie take to the task of eliminating him.  Which they did.  Then we found out that he had eaten the two baby birds that the girls had tried to rescue earlier!!  Circle of life!!

Just one of those exciting little events thrown into life to make it a bit more adventurous!!

Boy are we having a lot of snakes though!!  We see about one every 2-3 days.  Yesterday DD #3 had a ribbon snake, about 3 feet long, crawl across her flip-flopped foot!!  This will totally help my cause of making her and her younger sister wear closed shoes outside!!

Wish I had a picture of that one to show ya!!  :)