We almost never have a dull day in downtown Walnut Shade, so the fact that today has not been boring surprises no one.
Scott was away today, and I decided that this was the day to plant tomatoes. The weather has been quite warm, and they should have been planted two or three weeks ago, but I was late in realizing that my 18 little seedlings that had sprouted up quickly but only grew to a height of 1" in six weeks were in serious trouble. The problem turned out to be the seed starting mix they'd been sown in. Either it was deficient in nitrogen and/or phosphorus or it was contaminated, or both.
I had to very delicately transplant them into new soil in new peat pots, shaking off as much of the bad soil as possible. In so doing I saw one really weird thing; they had almost no roots! Anyway, over the past two weeks they have taken off and done GREAT. They've had a short hardening off period, and with a few expected dry sunny days before the next round of storms, I decided to take the plunge. This involved a number of steps.
1. Propping the pots better to sit level. This revealed some serious slug, pill bug, and ear wig problems; I've ordered some product to kill those guys.
2. Grating 8 bars of Irish Spring soap. This hour investment is made more pleasant by listening to a great audiobook.
3. Carrying everything - the plants, the jug of powdered egg shells, the trowel, the soap stockings - outside (with one hand while using a cane).
4. Working eggshells into the soil of all 12 pots.
5. Determining which variety should go into each pot. Nine of the cute baby plants are a bush variety that don't climb, and three are vining and do climb, so need to be closer to the porch rail for support.
6. Planting the plants. In so doing, I found that during just those two weeks in good soil they had grown massive, full sets of roots where they'd each had only a single one-inch root before. Velly intellesting (Matthew 13:3-8).
7. Dragging mulch from the smokehouse to the front yard.
8. Mulching the plants.
9. Watering the plants. They were gasping!
10. Dragging the excess mulch back to the smokehouse. In retrospect, this was not a smart move. I will need LOTS more mulch out front whenever I tackle the flower beds, so I could've just left it on the porch.
11. Extricating nine small tomato cages from the smokehouse. No matter how neatly they've been stacked, it is simply not possible to extricate the correct number of the appropriate size.
12. Caging the Bush Early Girl plants.
13. Extricating three large tomato cages from the smokehouse; comment on #11 still being true.
14. Caging the Oaxacan Jewels plants.
15. Hanging the soap stockings.
Although the whole process was somewhat challenging, took a fair amount of time, and generated a moderate amount of sweat, it was HIGHLY satisfying! The problem developed between Steps #13 and #14. As you can tell, I was up and down and in and out of the smokehouse numerous times. NOTE: Family members can testify to the fact that whenever one exits the smokehouse, it is impossible not to see the back of the house with its associated large blue Raintree Disposal trash can. Both are right in front of one's face.
Having (with effort) completed the Step #11 extrication, I simply tossed the cages down into the yard, walked down the steps while facing the house and its aforementioned trash can, picked up the cages, carried them out front, and proceeded with Step #12, Caging the Bush Early Girls. That took maybe seven minutes, at which point I returned to the smokehouse for the Step #13 extrication, which took maybe two minutes. So, for the sake of margin, let's say ten minutes elapsed between when I stood in the smokehouse doorway to descend the steps the first time and when I again stood in the doorway of the smokehouse to descend the steps the second time.
The first time there was nothing of significance to been seen.
The second time - a mere ten minutes later - I saw this.
Followed ninety seconds later by this.
Now, although my friend Janell may well dispute this, the sight of a black rat snake outside does not normally freak me out. I keep my distance from snakes, but I am not terrified of them. I usually find them interesting, the important exception being copperheads in the yard and/or cottonmouths in the water. I know that black rat snakes do us a service, especially since we live in the country and don't have a cat.
We don't see them often, but over the past 27 years, we have seen them occasionally - in the yard, along the back of the house, on the porch (where the kids sometimes found shed snakeskins), and once high up in a plum tree. I know they do like to climb. While floating the Buffalo once in my single days, one fell out of a tree into the canoe I was sitting in! Not fun AT ALL! Basically, we leave black rat snakes alone, and they eventually mosey along and probably enjoy a meal somewhere along the way.
Oh! Well, yes. There was one truly terrifying instance when a kid came back up out of the cellar without the requested gallon of milk because there'd been a black rat snake less than two feet away at eye level on the foundation ledge down there. But that is that person's story to tell, not mine. I can only imagine how scared I'd have been if I had been the one to meet such a snake at such close range. Again, snakes are okay on the property, but NOT inside any part of the house.
So I stood there at the bottom of the smokehouse steps and watched for a couple minutes. The pace at which the guy climbed was truly impressive, but the higher he went, the more concerned I got. When he was even with the first floor ceiling, I decided I had to do something, but what?!?
Where the heck was he going, and why? Reminds me of the end of Go, Dog! Go! ("To the tree, to the tree! Up the tree, up the tree! What is up there at the top of that tree?") It took him less than ten minutes to slither himself up to the very top, and then he went horizontally to the left, above the window in front of Scott's desk, all the way to the corner of the house. And turned around and went back the other way, pausing numerous times and going up against the eaves, as if trying to find a way onto the roof!
I was too shook up by this time to take good pictures, so I went back outside a few hours later to try to get some shots of the different parts of the house. They also are not great pictures, but here you can see Scott's window and the corner of the house where he turned around.
I know you can't tell from that picture, but earlier in the day, you could've see the seam where the top of the siding meets the underside of the eave, and he was closely investigating that seam, going mainly across the top of the window from left to right, but taking numerous detours up and in between those three beams that stick out to hold up the roof.
Our house is 112 years old, and neither "tight" nor "level" are words that accurately describe any part of it. In the above picture, we're looking at the office window above Scott's desk. My desk is ten feet away across the room from his. We have a third floor above the office, but because of the pitch of the roof, the walls of the third floor rooms aren't out flush with the exterior wall of the house. There's maybe six feet of unfinished attic between the third floor room wall(s) and the outside of the house.
If Mr. SS (Speedy Snake) found a crack at the top of the eave through which to slip into the house, he'd be in that unfinished attic space where no one ever wants to go and where he'd be nigh impossible to find and relocate... or, as hunters say, dispatch. And then I'd have to try to sleep wondering if there was a long black rat snake somewhere above me. Or even closer to me? Unthinkable!
And that's where I started to lose it.
What to do?!? Well, what does anyone do in a difficult situation that needs a practical solution?
Call J.R.! He can fix anything. So I did, but he told me that he doesn't do snakes. Hmm... Did he know anyone else at church who might? Yes. I could try Janell. I called Janell and in a shaky voice explained my situation. She does reptiles and was not freaked out. She was confident she could get him, but she was at work, and it would be well over an hour till she could get there. She talked me through my panic, which was a blessing. I told her I'd just sit there on the smokehouse step and keep an eye on him. I thought if I left and came back and he was gone, I'd really panic.
Then I called Michael. Michael is a lovely lady who lives in the neighborhood and is not easily intimidated. She was in town at the time, and I asked about her husband, who is also exceedingly handy and never met a challenge he'd ignore. He was in Highlandville, but she'd try to hurry him along and have him come by as soon as he could. I was grateful.
Mr. SS had now gone back toward the right. Here is another after-the-fact picture, and he's not in it, but you can picture him stretched out horizontally, with his tail in the space between the two windows and his head moving toward the top right corner of the vertical office window on the right. There's a birds' nest (my beloved purple finches) there. Later, folks discussed the likelihood that the snake was curious about whether the birds' nest contained any eggs.
I'd been sitting out there for close to 30 minutes at this point, and I was trying to think who else might be nearby and willing to climb a ladder and knock down a snake. I called Jared and asked him how he felt about snakes. He said they didn't bother him, so I explained my situation, and he said he was at a nearby car dealership and could swing by on his way home soon.
Meanwhile Zach had arrived to mow our yard, along with his grandpa, Reggie, who had come in his golf cart to pick up sticks for Zach. He said if I had a long stick, he'd knock it down for me. We "just happened" to have an extension ladder lying on the ground against the back of the house, because we'd recently dealt with a broken second floor window on a different part of the house. But Reggie said he'd broken his foot a while back and no longer did ladders. Between him and Zach there was discussion about shooting the snake with a pellet gun (too close to the window), Reggie standing on his golf cart and knocking it down with a long stick (no 20-foot sticks in evidence), or throwing a stick up at it to scare it so it would "jump" (again, too close to the window). They went back to yard work and I went back to sitting and watching Mr. SS and praying.
Steve drove by on his way home. Steve has a big shop/barn kind of building, and maybe he'd have some kind of tool or something that would be long enough. So I called him. He turned around and came back. He set up the ladder and asked if I had a rake. I thought so and walked slowly back to the lawn building to find one. As I came back down the driveway with the rake, Wade, Michael's husband who'd been in Highlandville, met me and asked where the snake was. I pointed to Steve, who'd found something long and was climbing the ladder, held by Reggie.
Steve did not hesitate. He climbed straight up and poked the snake, which writhed impressively and fell 20 feet to the ground. We (Reggie, Zach?, Wade, and I were all standing there, and Mr. SS looked like he wanted to head toward the driveway, but we were all in his way. He was not pleased. I stepped out of his way. Wade said, "What are you going to do with him now?" and I had no idea! I stammered something and Wade promptly stepped on the snake about 18" back from his head, reached down, and with his bare hand grabbed Mr. SS right at what I'd call the base of his neck. Mr. SS jerked back and I think gave Wade a mild bite, but he did not let go. He just held him with Mr. SS's belly and facing out (I'd never seen a black rat snake's underside before), and I got this proof of the capture.
Wade and the snake,
both very much alive!
Either right before or right after I took that picture, Jared arrived. We had quite the little backyard gathering, all these fine men stopping whatever they were doing to help a damsel in distress.
Then, while Steve was bringing down the ladder,
Wade asked me where I wanted the snake. "Far enough away that he doesn't come back to my house!" I figured he'd throw just him in the woods by the ditch, but no, he put him in his truck and said he'd take him to the creek and release him there. I was grateful!
Here's the text I sent to all of them once they all left and I was back inside:
"I am SO thankful for all of you who played a part in successfully ending my snake incident today.
- J.R.
- Janell
- Michael & Wade
- Reggie & Zach
- Steve
- Jared
Scott and I are blessed with great friends who do whatever they can to help us, and especially me when he's not available. We thank God for each of you! 😊"
Thus ends the story of Speedy Snake. And to all a good night!
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