The Snake Story

If you’ve made eye contact with Connor within the past two months you’ve already heard this story. He’s told it to everyone in our family, his classmates and any random grocery clerk that says hello to him. Apparently finding two snakes in our yard on the same day made quite an impact on him.
The first snake the cat had. It was a small Rat Snake that eventually coiled itself up around a stick to avoid being a cat toy. We threw it over the fence into the neighbor’s yard, since it was harmless and they have two boys that love snakes. And because there was no way the cat was going to leave this thing alone.
The second snake we found was when I was weeding the side of the house. I had gloves on and pulled a patch of weeds, revealing a Copperhead that was hiding from the sun. I backed up and told Connor to get the shovel. The Copperhead wasn’t that big, maybe a little over a foot, but it was big enough to make an impression on Connor who ran to get the shovel. Luckily for me he didn’t see anything shiny on the way and get distracted. He returned promptly with the shovel which he handed to me from four feet away.
I took the shovel and poised it over the snake knowing that I only had one shot. I hit it so hard my feet came up off of the ground and the snake was severed in several places since he was coiled when I hit him. And then he tried to come after me.
He couldn’t move very well since his head was attached to about 3 inches of body but that didn’t stop him from trying. It was disgusting. Once his death throes were over, we scooped him up with the shovel and took him to one of the neighbors for ID. I thought the snake was probably a Copperhead, but knew for sure it was poisonous by the way the hair on the back of my neck stood up. You can't ignore millions of years of evolution.
It was determined that the snake indeed was a Copperhead. Our neighbor put his finger down to touch the head and but changed his mind when Connor started to panic. Good thing too, since the snake opened its mouth and started rolling around again ready for action. It had been dead for 15 minutes. Did I mention that this was disgusting?
I took the snake and buried it in the back yard so the kids wouldn’t keep messing with it.
It’s a fairly tame story but when you hear Connor tell it, he’ll explain to you how he saved the entire family by bringing a shovel. And I hope you will pat his head and tell him how brave he is.