Snakes!

 Yesterday was National Snake Day and, since I have some history with snakes I feel compelled to acknowledge the snakes in my life.  

When I was home for the summer after my first year of teaching, my 11 year old little brother (aka my west coast brother) decided to tease me (lovingly, I'm sure) by wrapping a dead snake around the gas pedal in my car.  If it was an Olympic event, I would have won gold in the 'getting out of a car quickly' category.

Fast forward several years and my husband has taken our five year old son for a desert walk during one of our western camping trips and, when they came back, excitedly told me about the rattlesnake they had almost stepped on. We spent the rest of that evening safely inside our VW camper.  

And then there was Charlotte.  My college junior daughter invited her then serious boyfriend, future first husband, to spend some of the summer vacation with us, no problem.  But the reason behind this invitation showed up as a surprise when they came home.  They had adopted Charlotte, a four foot long boa constrictor.  Turns out my future first in-laws had refused to have a snake at their house, so she came to stay with us.  Actually, Charlotte wasn't too bad.  When they let her out of her terrarium she would slither around and liked to tangle herself around the rungs in the back of my dining room chairs.  She also would curl up on my lap and let me stroke her.  Still, they took her back to the pet store when they went back to college, and I was not sad to see her go.  

And that's it.  Those are my snake encounters.