Super dads vs. Super reptile

Last weekend we headed to a wedding out of town. We piggy backed this trip as our "last free weekend until after soccer season" trip. We stayed in a hotel, swam, shopped and ate. And now, we are gearing up for Brad's season to start on Wednesday!

But, before we left, we had a surprise visitor! It was crazy last Saturday morning. Brad was packing up the car, I was feeding Max and the girls were so excited they were driving us crazy:) Connor (our skiddish Cocker Spaniel) was barking incessantly in the backyard. He does this quite often. It's usually because of something in the backyard. Usually something like a beach ball, the blow up swimming pool or a balloon inside the kitchen that he can see. He's weird like that. However, it's NOT usually for something like this:

Yes, that would be a SIX FOOT SNAKE on our back porch! Holy moly. I remember saying, "What's Connor barking at?" Brad walked over to the back door and said, "A huge snake, holy cow!" I didn't believe him until I walked over and saw that there was in fact, a HUGE snake staring down Connor and Connor staring it down. I have never been more thankful for a quirky dog that barks at things in our backyard! Brad got a shovel and walked into the backyard. We put Connor outside of the gate. This guy quickly got his "snake game" on. He followed Brad wherever he walked. I've never heard a snake hiss like this one. It was so loud. Almost sounding like locusts in a tree. After a couple of jabs with the shovel, and the snake striking at the shovel, the snake was mad...and Brad was a little freaked out:)

He called our neighbor Brent who came over with his shovel, too. These two guys were pretty funny to watch. They stood there staring at the snake trying to figure out a plan for almost five minutes. Finally they decided on one.

Brad grabbed two old towels and an axe. He threw one towel over the snake and then a second towel, which had a hole in it that the snake conveniently stuck his head through. Brent was able to pin down his head and Brad whacked at it with the axe. The creepiest part was that it still moved. Even with it's head separated from it's body. Gross. The guys were pretty proud of themselves, which they should be! The girls were fascinated with all of it. We didn't let them watch the slaughter (ha!), but they wanted to see the snake after. It ended up being almost as tall as Brad! Morgan kept saying it looked like it was from the zoo. I agreed and said that is where all snakes should live:)

I am so thankful that we found this before Brent and Linsdey came over to feed Connor that night! We're pretty sure it's a rat (or chicken) snake. So, if Connor had been bit, it wouldn't have hurt him too bad. I don't think I need to see another snake exhibit for a long time. This guy gave me the heebie jeebies. It confirmed (not that we had been thinking about it) that we will NEVER have a pet snake!!