Copperhead

I was kneeling on the ground, emptying the leaf strainer basket on the pool pump, when I looked down and saw a copperhead moccasin between the pump and the timer switch.  That put him about 18 inches from my knee, easily within reach.  He was lying on a bed of dead leaves, and as you can tell from the picture above, their natural camouflage makes them hard to see in that sort of setting.

While I do have a healthy respect for snakes, I do not have an unreasonable fear of them.  In a similar situation, others I know – including my wife – might suffer paralysis or worse, but I did not. I quietly got up and headed for the garage for a weapon, selecting a sharpshooter shovel.

I didn’t lose my head, although the moccasin literally did a few minutes later. 

When I got back, the snake was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn’t good enough.  I used the shovel to rake away leaves until I found him.  At that point, I used the shovel as a guillotine.  The viper’s head (yes, copperheads are pit vipers) ended up buried in the moist leaf mulch and I left it there.  I threw his body into the woods where it became lunch for some scavenger. 

You would think that this incident would make me more cognizant of my surroundings.  That would have been my guess too, but we both would have been wrong.

Just a couple hours later, while walking out to the mailbox, I almost stepped on a bright yellow parakeet that was sitting in the grass.  That bird flying up scared me a lot more than the snake.

The parakeet – most likely an escaped pet – flew into a nearby tree.  When I talked to him, he would whistle back, but I couldn’t coax him down.  Finally, he flew away.