snaky...with pecans

We went down to the country house a day early last week and didn't come back til today.  Didn’t really have any pressing reason to stay in the city as I could do the art work I need to do down there and my sister and I were having a garage sale on Saturday so I thought it would be good to get there a day early and help get things organized.  The weather turned cold on Saturday so the garage sale was something of a bust but Wharton is having it’s first ‘city-wide’ garage sale in June so we’ll just try again then.

Since I’ve had too many kitties hit by cars at night, Emma spends the nights indoors, which means that she wants out as soon as it gets light.  She very quietly, insistently, mews until one of us gets up and lets her out.  When we are in the country house, we leave the back door slightly ajar, so she can get back in, and then crawl back in bed because we are not early risers.

So I’m sitting there, Friday morning, in the den (the room with the back door) with my coffee and I look down and about 12” from my feet is a snake.  ‘Snake!’, I yelled and pulled my feet up.  Well, it was a small snake, 6” or 7”, but I’m not used to finding them in my house.  It was brown with tan markings, a little rat snake.  I got a container and scooped it up and let it go outside, far from any of my doors.

When we bought the country house, it had a built in buffet in the dining area and since we have a piece of furniture for that, we took it out and put it against the back wall of the garage.  It’s a nice piece so I wanted to put it in the garage sale.  To that end, Friday night, we were out there getting it put in the back of the truck.  We got it pulled away from the wall and I went around to the side and there was another snake, only it was big.  ‘Big snake!’, I yelled and started doing my snake dance.  This one was about 30”, same brown with tan markings, a much bigger rat snake.  Rat snakes are good to have around so I didn’t want to hurt it, I just didn’t want it where I could see it and it wasn’t too happy being seen.  It kept trying to get in the wall.  So I got a stick and tried to move it along.  Ever tried to herd a snake?  Doesn’t work too well.  I finally annoyed it enough that it slithered off underneath one of the shelving units on the other side of the garage.  

Saturday morning, I’m at my sister’s unloading the last few things, one of which was a piece of wall to wall carpet that we took out of the back room and which had been laying on the floor of the garage.  It was rolled up and I just leaned it up against the tailgate of the truck.  My sister flipped it open so people could see what it looked like and two handfuls of pecans rolled down to the ground.  Some little creature was stealing pecans out of the container I have them in and stashing them in the carpet.  Probably the reason the rat snake was in the garage.