Okay it was only three months ago I wrote a piece about snakes. I don’t like snakes no matter what kind and where they are or what they’re doing. There was a time when I’d shoot them because my male cat would try to play with them and toss them up in the air. Unfortunately, Harry disappeared one day, it was a heartbreaker. His sister Wilhelmina shows no interest in snakes though she loves to catch Skinks. Skinks are small and quick. When she manages to catch a skink, she hurls it around the yard. Eventually most often, the tail will snap off and the skink is gone. Mississippi has five native skink species: Common Five-lined, Southeastern Five-lined, Broad headed, Little Brown and Coal Skinks. Mississippi is home to 84 native and established exotic reptile species, including the American Alligator, 41 species of snakes, six being venomous, 29 turtle species and 13 lizard types. This last bit of information here was printed by AI. I’m not a real follower of AI so much, I mean she’s probably never even seen Mississippi, but we’ll let it go. She rather nailed it for the land we live in. We’ve had alligators in both lakes, a number of snakes in the yard, a turtle crossed the driveway just yesterday and Wilhelmina sat with me on the front porch while I was sipping coffee and she was hoisting skinks into the air.

As much as I write about snakes, skinks, alligators, and turtle crossings is probably why we don’t have too much company coming around wanting to sit on the porches or down by the lakes. The snake thing is only a seasonal occurrence. Alligators will mosey over to the neighbors’ lakes and then they return from whence they came.

Once I put out a sticky trap to capture mice. At the time I thought maybe the rain flushed them in. Later when I checked the traps, I found a snake had crawled in then wrapped his body around the little tent like a cover and whipped his tail on the other side. He was a goner. It was icky but I slid a broom handle through the tent like top and dropped him in the garbage can. If he had been alive, I admit I would have called Sam when he got back from fishing.

Once a neighbor friend shot a snake multiple times in her yard. She called her husband out to identify the snake, but he said there wasn’t enough of him left to identify.

We’re not the only ones that deal with critters out here, oh yes, we did have a black bear come by but that’s really rare.

All of the above is true and somewhat humorous at times however our neighbor friend’s husband was bitten by a Copperhead snake recently. Such a bite is painful and requires immediate emergency medical evaluation. If you are in such an area be on the lookout round you.

Shannon Bardwell is a writer living quietly in the Prairie. Email reaches her at [email protected].