Snakes
I am not a fan of snakes.
One spring day, my little sister and I, age 7 and 12, stepped outside our front door to go to school, and saw that the entire front walk and front steps were covered with a writhing mass of garden snakes. , but at that moment, all I saw was a scene from a horror movie: The Attack of The Killer Snakes.
In my haste to push my little sister, who was behind me, back into the house as she came around my side, she stepped on the tail of one of the snakes. To the horror of both of us, the startled snakes snapped up on its tail and wrapped itself along her bare leg under her little dress. She shrieked and so did I, so much that my mother appeared in her housecoat at the door behind us, demanding to know what was the matter and then shrieking herself when she saw what it was.
Only a few moments passed, I'm sure, but it seemed like forever before I thought to lunge at my sister to push her back inside the house, while my mother, seeing what else was required, struck at the snake with the morning newspaper she luckily had been holding.
After only a few minutes of recovery time, she insisted that we go on to school by way of the back door. She was left with the daunting task of getting rid of the snakes--not realizing that when the sun went down and the cement was no longer warm, they would go back into the field next to our house, which was their summer home. And, being a widow, she couldn't get her husband to do it.
As I recall, the live-in gardener of the old lady who lived next door alone on a two acre lot came over, at her request, and beat them off with a broom---while wearing rubber boots. These were not poisonous snakes, I learned, but
One spring day, my little sister and I, age 7 and 12, stepped outside our front door to go to school, and saw that the entire front walk and front steps were covered with a writhing mass of garden snakes. , but at that moment, all I saw was a scene from a horror movie: The Attack of The Killer Snakes.
In my haste to push my little sister, who was behind me, back into the house as she came around my side, she stepped on the tail of one of the snakes. To the horror of both of us, the startled snakes snapped up on its tail and wrapped itself along her bare leg under her little dress. She shrieked and so did I, so much that my mother appeared in her housecoat at the door behind us, demanding to know what was the matter and then shrieking herself when she saw what it was.
Only a few moments passed, I'm sure, but it seemed like forever before I thought to lunge at my sister to push her back inside the house, while my mother, seeing what else was required, struck at the snake with the morning newspaper she luckily had been holding.
After only a few minutes of recovery time, she insisted that we go on to school by way of the back door. She was left with the daunting task of getting rid of the snakes--not realizing that when the sun went down and the cement was no longer warm, they would go back into the field next to our house, which was their summer home. And, being a widow, she couldn't get her husband to do it.
As I recall, the live-in gardener of the old lady who lived next door alone on a two acre lot came over, at her request, and beat them off with a broom---while wearing rubber boots. These were not poisonous snakes, I learned, but