Ole Grandad

When I first moved onto my 100 acres, I built a quickie turnout pen for my dogs. Everyday I would take a couple of them at a time for long walks. I had to keep them on a leash because it had been years since they had been allowed to roam free and I didn't want them to take off and get lost.

Everyday we would go by a brushpile on the way to more wide open spaces and I would think to myself, "that would be a good place for a snake." We walked past the pile for several days and each day I thought about it. One day we were walking and I stepped over a cable and so did my dogs. We went a few more steps when I thought, "that cable wasn't there before."

I turned around to look and, sure enough, the cable was moving. It was huge! It was a very long snake. It was so long that it stretched all the way across the road into the brush at one end. On the other end it was going into a hole. It was at least 4 inches in circumference and neither end looked any smaller that I could see.

I hotfooted it out of there with my dogs. I didn't stick around to see exactly how big "ole grandad" was. I couldn't take a chance on one of my dogs getting mixed up with him. I don't know if I ever saw "ole grandad" again. There was one time on my riding mower that I came across a snake. It was moving away from me and it went on and on and on. It was quite disconcerting even though I was never in any danger of being bitten.

I was afraid of snakes before I moved onto my 100 acres. I saw so many of them that I'm not afraid of them anymore. They all had one thing in common. EVERY snake I saw was moving away from me when I saw it. They were all trying to get away from me - except for one. I guess I almost ran over him with my riding mower and I looked down to see his head pinging away at the side of my mower. Another foot back and he would have been biting my leg! That was the only time I was ever in danger of being bitten that I know of.