Tuesday, February 5, 2013

How to handle a snake...

Before Surly Contractor, we had a real quirky family living next door.  I grew up with them, even went to the prom with the youngest son.

How quirky you ask?  Well, they had a spider monkey for a pet when my family moved here in the early 70's.  The mother smoked pot for "medical" reasons.  And do the Dr Evil hand quotes when you say "Medical".  They had a horse in the backyard, but no one rode.  Interesting people!

Mrs. Quirk is one of those real strong willed, but incapable humans on this planet.  She'll do her best to handle it, until she can't and calls for help.  Somebody then has to solve her problem, that of course she has made worse by what she has done.  She's divorced and living in a different county now, estranged from the son I was friends with, sort of...I mean she kicked him out when he was a senior in high school.  Hence us going to the prom together because he ended up at a different high school and wanted to go to prom at our school.  They reconcile and then she kicks him out again, maybe he steals her pot or loses his job, and she wonders why he can't function in society.

I guess this neighborhood has always been populated with interesting people!

Years ago, when there was little development around us, and lots of woods and wildlife.  Mrs Quirk, on Christmas day, looked out her sliding glass doors and discovered a water moccasin sunning on her pool deck.  For anyone outside of moccasin area, these are very poisonous and highly aggressive bad ass snakes that will actually attack you...unlike a rattlesnake that warns you and flees if possible.  It was a big snake and having kicked her son out and divorced her husband, Mrs. Q decided it was up to her to deal with this menace.

Since she had a .45 hand gun, she decided, this would be the best method of dealing with the snake.  On the concrete.  It's amazing she didn't kill herself or someone else with the ricocheting bullets.  The snake was perfectly all right.  Bullets wedged in the fence, in the bricks, snake still around the pool, but now angry.

Eventually another neighbor came down and killed the snake for her (made more difficult now that the snake was angry), but the pool deck to this day still bears the marks of the snake attack.

Do you think it's in the water here?



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