Snakes in the Yard

For whatever reason, about three weeks ago, we began seeing grass snakes in our yard. Up until this point, we had gone the whole summer without seeing any. We'd spent a fair amount of time working in the yard and hadn't noticed any snakes until September hit.

And then we started seeing the snakes daily. We'd see them in the front yard and in two different places in the backyard. We didn't really know what the change was and why we started seeing them more. We did discover three places underneath our cement driveway and porch slab where they were coming from. We tried to fill the holes, but they kept coming.

Now, usually bugs or other creepy crawly things do not bother me, at least when it comes to killing them. I can handle flies and spiders. Cockroaches big and small don't terrify me. Worms are fine. I even dealt with seeing rats in Macau ok. The one thing I cannot stand are snakes. I hate them with a passion. They are sneaky and sly. They slither and hiss. They are just so gross.

As soon as we started seeing them in multiple places in our yard, I became bound to the indoors. I was no longer interested in working in the yard or going out to the garden. Seriously...how can something 12 inches long confine me to the home? I can't explain it, but it happened. So Scott, in all of his husbandly goodness, started out on snake patrol. He would go out in the morning and the evening with his shovel, hunting for snakes in our yard. He even developed a "hunting call" for them and had a hunting pattern to find them. Over a period of 10 days he killed 15 snakes! We had no idea there were that many.

And then he mowed our yard, and we haven't seen any since. It's been about a week without any snake sightings and I'm starting to feel that it may be safe to venture out into the yard again!