Two Doodles, a Chicken, and Field Mice!!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

My dogs and I walk every day up at our nearby park.  I love to walk in the cold weather, because I don’t have to worry about snakes.  I hate snakes and since I am always frantically looking for them, I usually am the one to see them on our walks.  I also know when I am walking with my husband and he turns suddenly and says, “let’s go a different way,” that translates to “snake up ahead and husband does not want to have ear drums blown out by screaming wife.”  How I raised two kids who are not afraid of snakes, I do not know, but I did.  When they were little, whenever we went to a petting zoo or someone came to school with a Reptile show, my two little darlings would be the first ones to raise their hands if they asked for volunteers to come up closer to see the snake.

 

Once, they helped hold a very large snake that could have easily dined on them for supper and I turned to the woman next to me and told her, “If that thing wraps itself around my daughters and starts squeezing, I am really going to miss those two when they are gone.”  No motherly instinct to protect my children kicked in at any point during that demonstration, just sheer horror.  One other time, I went to school to pick up my oldest daughter and she came towards me with two small snakes wrapped around her arms. It seemed her teacher’s daughter brought in her pet snakes and my daughter thought it would be a good idea to test her mother’s reactions in the hallways of her school.  Let’s just say we both knew that day that she could have asked for anything and gotten it by threatening to put that snake on me, but she also knew that eventually she had to relinquish those snakes back to the rightful owner and go home with her mother.  In the end, she made the right choice, the one that allowed her to walk the halls of that school without being pointed at and called, “the girl with the handprint tattoo,” mistakenly doled out by a mother thrashing about in a panicky attempt to escape.

 

Another time, while the girls and I were visiting with my in-laws overnight, they had a bat in the house.  They had wisely not told me they were having trouble with bats before our arrival, because I am sure they realized, if they had, they would never see their grandchildren again at their house after dusk and we would have stayed at a nearby hotel.   Upon our arrival, my sister-in-law informed me that they had had a “little trouble” with a bat in the house the previous nights.  Now, in my book, a “little trouble” means there is a part of your hair you can’t get right in the morning, it does not mean a wild creature, that has been featured in every Vampire movie you have ever seen, is flying loose throughout the house where you are now staying.  She also told me not to worry because the bat never came out after midnight and proving, once again, that desperate people are inclined to believe anything, I felt safer since it was nearing that mark.  Well, sure enough, that bat made an appearance after midnight and I barricaded myself in my room like I was starring in one of those Slasher movies.  Thankfully, my sister-in-law had taken cover in the room where my daughter’s were staying and kept them company for the night.  I tried to yell reassuring words to them from across the hall, but they later said, “we are all going to die,” did not comfort them.  They also wanted to know why I didn’t come to them to make sure they were ok and I made a mental note to myself to start encouraging them to watch Roseanne and lay off the Hallmark movies.

 

Why am I telling you all this? Not because I want you to see that my motherly motto is, “survival of the biggest, loudest, and most afraid,” but because I want you to understand the magnitude of my fears when it comes to stuff like snakes, bats, and mice, which finally leads me to the point of this blog.  So, getting back to my walk in the park…I have been happily walking with my dogs in the cold weather without a care in the world.  I told myself that there is nothing to fear.  All of God’s creatures, that I hate, are on hiatus until summer.  From time to time, we see the occasional groundhog, deer, or squirrel, but they don’t bother me, so I never put two and two together as the dogs and I walked along in the grass.  Sure, I have seen them bury their noses in the flattened grass and I have seen both of them leap in the air as if they just stepped on something, but I just assumed they were smelling the horses that walk on the same trail and jumping for joy to be on our walk. 

 

Sunday, while walking with the dogs and my husband, Fudge and Vern excitedly buried their noses in the grass, like they always do, and my husband said, “they must smell all the field mice that burrow themselves in the matted down grass.” WHAT?  “You mean to tell me, the mice have not hitched rides on the backs of some accommodating birds and gone south for the winter?” I asked him.  So, he went on to tell me, and this is why I hate those nature shows that educate people, the winter habits of mice, and I told him I prefer to live in my state of ignorant bliss and things got heated and he said I should stop advertising that fact and I told him to stick his head in the tall grass and choke on a mouse and he said I was real mature and I said I know you are, but what am I, and he knows I can say that forever, so we stopped arguing. The damage is done, however, and now I know that on my walks with my dogs, I am putting myself in great peril and there is a possibility that one mouse with a faulty GPS system is going to go up my pant’s leg when he should have gone down, and my life will be over.   I know what you are all thinking….there goes Fudge and Vern’s walks, but come on, we are talking about Fudge and Vern, my four legged babies.  I just need to find my snow gators to thwart those wayward mice or stop conversing with my husband on our walks.  I had better start looking for my gators.

[Camilla and Darwin]

Laurie... unfortunately... LOL. One time I found a completely intact dead snake in the road. I picked it up and stuck it next to the sink in our camper, knowing she would think it was fake. She went to the sink, said "You guys think you are sooo funny" and picked it up... only to realize it was a real snake. I have never, ever heard her scream so loud. HA!

[Carol and Banjo]

LOL Karen!  I still can't believe I survived it to tell about it.   Needless to say it was the topic of conversation that day.   I have one relative I won't mention by name....and she's the only one outside the immediate family I shared this with.   Evil sister that I am.....now I don't have to worry about her over extended stays.....hmmmmm....it's been a while since she's been here   ; -)

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

OMD, Carol, if that happened to me I'd be using the computer at the rest home right now! OMD! I have towels in the dryer right now!

When I lived on the forest preserves, there were rumors that a snake had gotten into one woman's clothes dryer via the dryer vent. I couldn't open my dryer for a month!

[Carol and Banjo]

Laurie I'm with you one hundred and ten percent!   This past Mother's Day, before the kids arrived to visit (and dine on a feast prepared by me (their Mother)....I did say it was Mother's Day didn't I?.... I went down to our finished basement to put laundry in the machine.  On my way upstairs I stopped in the den to pick up a small pile of folded towels and pillow cases.  As I lifted the pillow cases from the pile I found a coiled garter snake on the towel below.  Believe me just typing this out sends my stomach into a nervous spasm!   My initial split second reaction to seeing the snake was my son (who hadn't been to the house in 7-8 months) must be playing a practical joke on me.  I could only wish!    I screamed and ran up the stairs two at a time....leading my husband to think I surely must have found a slashed up dead body downstairs.  Being the big brave DH that he is he went down and carefully scooped the snake into a bucket, (did I mention he was wearing heavy gloves and using a long stick?)  and brought it across the street and let it go.   After he returned I sent him downstairs to do a complete sweep of every inch of space in search of relatives to the removed snake.   After he searched I went down with him and made him search again under my supervision.     It seems that a couple of weeks prior, he had opened a sliding door to air things out and he figured that the snake must have been sunning himself on the patio outside and decided to investigate our basement when he discovered that the screen wasn't completely closed due to a build up of leaves.    There are two reasons for me to go down there....laundry and the treadmill...(the treadmill not so much)...each time I go down I'm all eyes.     I was hoping sharing this would be therapeutic for me.....but apparently not....my stomach is in knots!!!!

[Bonnie and Kona]

When my son was 11 he came home from a pet store with a rat. Yes, a rat. I cannot remember who the mother was that took him there and let him bring home a pet??? It's a good thing. I told him we were going right back there to return the gray rodent. He insisted that I watch the movie, "The Secret of Nimh". He was certain this would make me love rats. As soon as the movie was over we returned the creature. blech! 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Laurie, I feel the same way about snakes, only somehow I managed to raise a DD who has elevated my fear to a terror that is truly impressive...you cannot even say the word "snake" in her presence. I will go Doris one better and say that the only good snake is a handbag.

However, snakes do kill mice. ;)

Get yourself a pair of tall snug heavy boots for walking in vermin infested areas. Buy the most expensive ones you can find, and present the bill to your DH with a little note: "Thanks for the heads up on the mice."

 

 

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

Great blog, Laurie.  I also am terrified of snakes, bats and mice.  A few years ago I intercepted DH as he was in the process of ordering bat houses...he thought that if they were strategically placed they would prevent mosquitoes and we could enjoy sitting out on Summer evenings.  WTD???  There was no way that I wanted to set up condos in my yard for the area's bat population.  Bats....mosquitoes....that's a "no brainer" for me.  My DS loves the movie "Snakes On A Plane"....I make him watch it in his room with the door closed, but there is one scene that I did see.  Here's one way to deal with snakes....

[Jennifer,Chloe & Myla]

I'm with you all the way on this. What I don't know won't freak me out!! I'm sure there are mice around here but if I KNOW there is that's a freak show! Scared to death!! I oce was doing gardening and was on my knees bent over in the front of the house and something flies up my back! Neighbors were out do I scream? I looked up to find a chipmunk running the perimeter of the house I guess I got in his way. I will never forget that feeling, never. I called DH on his cell (he was in the backyard) and screamed get the chipmunk he's coming your way and I'm not coming back there until I know he's out of the yard. He said he was bt nope he came running out of the downspout when I walked by!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

J, Even though I don't like mice, I would have rescued it too from drowning, but then I would have asked it to leave the premises. LOL  I actually am very glad I did not pass my fears on to my kids. You know they do the opposite of what their mom says..

[J and Riley (and Luna)]

I guess I'm more like your kids on this one!

- I once saved a drowning mouse from a swimming pool, dried it with a little towel and fed it some veggies before releasing it once it was nice and dry

- I found a little snake on Luna's walk in the dog park (she didn't see it thankfully), and I didn't know what kind it was so I followed it so I could see what markings it had so I could figure out the species after I got home