The Snake Story: or, how I saved central Minnesota from a snake infestation

So today I was on the phone chatting with my friend Kristin while the girls and I were outside in the backyard. Svea rolled a little wheelbarrow out to the garden to do some digging and all of the sudden I heard her scream, "SNAKE! MOMMY, GET IT!" I looked over at her and there it was. Part of me was praying she was making it up but I knew there was no way she was.

The snake must die.

There was a time when I thought picking up snakes in the wilderness was fun. I have no idea why this was; I must confess I was probably showing off for boys. However, I have had the sense to never pick up a snake around Nate, successfully fooling him into thinking I am completely inept at snake removal.

Now, I am hardly the person to be with when there's a critter problem. I would generally rate myself as less than helpful (completely useless?) in situations like this. I looked around: no other adults in sight. Shucks. I had no ideas or techniques on how to kill a snake. All I can say is, I was relieved I was wearing clogs.

I was still on the phone with Kristin, who was being extremely helpful. "You can do this. You can kill it. Don't worry; I've been on the phone with people when they've found snakes in their backyard before." She suggested I aim for the head, which happens to be my least favorite part of a snake.

I ran over to the shed and opened it up, hoping to find a useful weapon in there to kill the snake, like a Smith & Wesson, or at the very least, a sawed-off shotgun. However, Nate and I don't keep firearms, something that I am now reconsidering. What was in the shed were some gardening implements, like shovels, a hoe, a spade, and a dethatcher. I considered using the dethatcher but didn't want to clean up the potential mess. That left the spade.

When I came back to the garden where the snake had been, it was gone. Then I saw it by our neighbor's garden. It was sneaking around the perimeter of it. I chased it around the garden to the edge of it. At this point I wanted to just leave it and hope it would stay away. But if I didn't kill it, Svea would never set her big toe in the backyard again.

That's when Elin decided to wander over to me and see what the excitement was about. I had to remove her from the garden and she started crying, Svea was on the deck screaming and I was panicking. Morale was low. After a few more minutes of listening to Kristin's encouragement, I ran up to the snake and started randomly whacking the spade at it, screaming with each whack (that seemed to help) hoping at some point, to just kill it. After a few tries I decapitated it and then. I. ran. away.

I called Nate later to let him know what I had done.

"Hey honey, guess what?"

"What?"

"I killed a snake."

"What?" For some reason he seemed to think that I had to have been making this up.

I told Nate it was laying dead in our Swedish neighbor's garden. "Well," said Nate, "Why don't you pick it up with a rake and throw it in the trash so Aulf doesn't have to deal with it?"

"Are you kidding me? I think I almost had a heart attack killing that thing. I was sweating, my heart was beating so fast it was going to explode, and I think I at least suffered from a minor panic attack. No way am I picking it up. They have me to thank for killing the stupid thing. If I go back to pick it up, I am going to die."

So, that was that. A little present for the neighbors with love, from me to them.