APRIL FOOLS DAY. DID YOU PUT A RUBBER SNAKE ON THE STEPS? I DIDN'T.

SPRING AT LAST! LIFE IS STIRRING IN THE GARDEN.

This almost on April Fools' adventure started last week while it was still March.  One evening while I was sitting in the living room,  I noticed my Pom, Fuzzy jumping up and huffing around and acting like something was in the hallway.  He was on alert and came in wanting me to come with him.  He was sniffing the floor and acting scared like he does if there is a spider in the house.  I put shoes on my feet and carried another shoe in my hand and we went spider hunting.  We looked and looked and he sniffed and sniffed, and we never did find any spiders.  

I had forgotten all about the Fuzzy's phantom spider incident, but two or three nights later my husband went down in the basement.  I heard him coming back upstairs and saying,  "What is this?".  "What is this?", he said again. 

"What's what?", I asked from upstairs.

"Is this some kind of fooler?  It's not April Fool's day yet."  And then he asked, "Did you put a rubber snake on the steps?"

When he said that, I was visualizing one of those great big prank snakes--and I knew that I had not put any rubber snake on the steps and we are the only two people that live in this house. 

"No, I didn't put any rubber snake on the steps!!", by this time I was being loud.
Then I asked him if he was sure it wasn't moving.  He said "No, it's not moving". 

Then he stepped up and over the "rubber" snake and came up and got the foot-and-a- half long BBQ grill fork. (He couldn't find the tongs) and a plastic bag to put the rubbery dead snake into.

The snake was still in the same place on the steps.  He slipped the fork under the snake and started to lift it into the bag and suddenly the snake sprung to life and fell off of the fork and (very luckily) fell into a big empty five gallon paint bucket that was under the steps.  Had the snake not fallen into the bucket, it would have been loose in the basement.

We took the bucket o'snake out onto the front porch. It was 2:45 in the morning and I couldn't see well enough to tell what kind of snake it was.  I wanted to see it in the daylight, so I put it into a stapled closed brown grocery bag which we then put into the empty recyclable bin to keep the snake from freezing to death before morning.

Fuzzy could smell the snake in the bucket and was trailing along sniffing and huffing and carrying on.  I knew right then that is what he had been telling me about the night that he was acting like he had seen a super spider.  I think he saw the snake that night.  Why he didn't continue to tell me about a snake being in the house, I don't know. Maybe he thought it was going to be a new pet. The snake was only four steps down the stairs from the kitchen, which makes me think that it had gone under the kitchen/basement door and fell down those four steps.  The snake was too small to have been able to make it that far up the steps from the basement.  I don't know where or how the snake came into the house, but I think that it must have come in when the weather turned cold after being warm for a couple of days.

In the light of day, I could identify the snake as a little brown garter or garden snake. He/she had a cute little dark ring marking around the neck. It never tried to bite or strike at me and posed for several pictures.  I put the pencil in with Snakey so you could see exactly how little this snake was.

SO SMALL THAT HE/SHE IS RATHER CUTE

We finished with our photo op and I set Snakey free in the rocks by my zinnia bed.  From the information that I read, these little snakes like to eat slugs and are beneficial in the garden. 

SETTING SNAKEY FREE

I am not afraid of snakes if I know exactly what type they are, but I would not like the surprise of grabbing one up by mistake while pulling weeds.  Maybe I will start wearing garden gloves more often, even if they do make me hot.

LOOKS LIKE I MIGHT NEED TO PULL THAT WEEDY GRASS--OR NOT!



NOTE TO SELF--WEAR GARDENING GLOVES!

So, to wrap it up and put a bow on it and wish you a fun-filled April Fool's day, I will leave you with this image of a very different type of bow...