Sunday, June 29, 2008

What do you call a snake with no clothes on?

Il Capo and Nanny were out working in the garden during the recent hot weather when a snake passed them and headed up the path towards the house.



Il Capo shouted after it,

"There's no one home."


No I'm kidding. what she actually shouted was

"Holy Christ! Snake! SNAKE!"

When it reached the house it seemed to disappear, which hardly put these two ladies at their ease.  In fact that evening, Nanny moved her bed from underneath the window, so nothing would slither onto her in the night.



The following weekend we were at a barbecue at our next door neighbours' when someone noticed a snake on their drive.  A group of us trooped round from the back of the house to look at it.  Not Il Capo or Nanny, they didn't want to appreciate it.  It was a garter snake, about eighteen inches long. 



Like this one:

We stood around it in a crescent, which made it nervous and it moved onto our drive.



"Uh oh", said I.  "My wife won't like that", and I called Son Number One to help me drive it away from the house.  He was very excited by this duty and may not have been paying complete attention because even though it was between him and the house he ran straight at it, giggling.  The snake accelerated away towards our front door.  I overtook him and stood in the way, but as far as the snake was concerned I was not nearly as scary as a laughing child waving his arms and it went right past me and hid in a bush beside the front door.



Not a wholly successful manoeuvre maneuver.



I broke the news to the ladies that we had relocated the snake to three feet from our door.



They took it remarkably well, considering.



P.S. Snaked!

3 comments:

  1. Oh please, I was preparing Swiss Chard from someone's garden the other day and a tiny snake slithered out of it onto my kitchen counter! I eventually grabbed it with tongs and threw it outside, but it was close...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I knew nothing good came from greens.

    ReplyDelete