The Last Thing You Want to Find in Your Bathtub

Sunday afternoon we were all rushing out the door to make it to evening services at church.  I grabbed the keys and was on my way to the garage to get the car started when I heard Tricia call from the back of the house.  "Kyle, there's a snake in the house!"  I immediately thought that it was just a garter snake.  There are a bunch of them all around the back patio and they do get in the house quite often.  We just pick them up and toss them out the back door.

But then, as if she was reading my mind, she added, "And it's not a garter snake!"  That made me move a little quicker to where she was calling.  I followed her voice into our bedroom and then into the bathroom.  She was pointing to the bathtub and there I saw it.  It was a juvenile rat snake.  We call them chicken snakes.  They are harmless.  It was a little over two feet long.  I picked up a shirt and threw it over the snake and then threw them into the backyard.  As it turns out Tricia had left some windows open during the nice weather we've been experiencing and I'm sure the chicken snake decided to come indoors and get in our bathtub to give us a scare.  It didn't turn out well for the snake.  Come to think of it, this is how all our trouble started - with a woman and a snake!

This chicken snake was a small snake and they are good for cleaning out the rat and mouse population, but they will grow very large and then begin eating eggs.  We can't have that.  I have ceramic and wooden eggs in the nesting boxes to fool these snakes.  They'll eat one of those and it gives them a fatal case of constipation.

I picked up a piece of firewood and bludgeoned the snake.  I almost felt sorry for him.

I was thinking to myself and even told Tricia, "Where there is one snake, there's always another."  Sure enough, today I walked out of the garage and saw another chicken snake, this one a little bit bigger.  There was a pipe laying around and I picked it up and dispatched the snake with quickness.

I decided to throw this one out into the barnyard and let the chickens take out their revenge on the serpent.  They obliged.

Two down.  How many more to go?