How to Handle a Snake

I've had several experiences with snakes over the years.  Many of them when I was much younger, but the stories here occurred within about a three month period while I was living in Wylie, Texas.  While I am not terrified of snakes, these encounters were a little bit too close for comfort.

One evening I heard one of my dogs barking incessantly on the back porch and opened the door to peer outside.  It was nighttime and I did not have my glasses on but I saw what I thought was a "large pile" on the porch outside the master bedroom and thought to myself, "How did  either of my little bitty dogs make a pile that large?"  I retrieved my glasses and headed out to clean off the porch, but as I stepped out with my vision fully intact I saw that the pile was a pile of snake and it started slithering off.  After I returned with a shovel, the snake was quickly dispatched and both pieces were disposed of.

A couple of weeks later I was headed to bed and walking through the living room I turned off the light, but not before I saw a flash of movement under one of the chairs.  Upon closer inspection I found that it was a very small snake, about 6 inches long.  I scooped it up with a nearby newspaper and deposited into a jar.  I wanted Daniel to take it to school to his science teacher to find out what kind of snake it was.  All I remember is that the snake STUNK to high Heaven!  Although I don't remember what the science teacher decided, I have since learned that ratsnakes are very common in North Texas and they do release a musky "stink" when alarmed. 

My third encounter within this three month time frame occurred one evening after returning home with my son.  We walked into the house and on the tiled kitchen floor there was a snake curled up under one of my plant stands.  We just stopped and stared at it.  My mind raced and all I could think about was getting that snake out of the house, because I did not want to spend the money it would take to stay at a hotel if that snake slithered off and I could not find it.  I just remember yelling at my son to open the front door as I grabbed a dish towel from the oven handle, made my way over to the snake and grabbed it up.  I have to say that I did make note that it was not a rattlesnake, however, I did not know if it was poisonous or not.  I know I grabbed it as safely as I could, but I just did not want to give it time uncoil.  I raced like a madwoman with that snake to the open front door and threw everything --- snake AND dish towel out into my front yard.  I did not want to hold on to it for even one second longer than I had to.  We then slammed the front door and locked it (assuming that the snake did not have a key I guess).

Within a few days of this incident I brought my dogs outside to the front yard and stood on the porch while they ran around and checked things out.  As I turned to go back inside with them, the below site greeted me.  I had stood on the porch for about 15 minutes within about a foot of this, never noticing it.  Both dogs had run out the front door and back in without so much as a sniff in its direction.  It looked to be the same snake I had tossed out a few nights earlier.  I think it must have been the companion to the first snake I had "dispatched" and maybe the parent to the baby snake I had sent off to school without its permission.  Either way, this was my last encounter with a snake in or near my home, so maybe leaving it there that day was the proper way to "handle a snake".