Florida is known for its wildlife, and I love most of it. I always enjoy watching deer, turkeys, and Sandhill Cranes stroll through my backyard. I love the little lizards that are sunning on the wall or darting about, puffing out their big red throats and eating the insects. The wading birds along the lakes and canals are all majestic and beautiful. There are Ibis, Blue Heron, Egrets, Storks, Limpkins, Anhinga, and Cormorants, among others whose names I do not know. And there are my favorites, the alligators. I love trying to spot one floating on the surface of the water or, on special rare occasions, sunning himself up on the bank.
Yesterday we saw three other critters. First, I saw a wild pig. Those are NOT my favorite Florida critter. This one was dead on the side of the road. It was a fairly big, black, wild boar. I guess it didn't make it across the street.
When we got ready to go out to do some errands in the afternoon, we went out to the driveway where we had left the car after returning from swimming. We got in the car and looked up at the garage and saw a cute little green frog clinging to the wall near the door. One of those actually came into the house once, but we were able to rescue it and take it outside. We see these often after rainstorms or in the damp evenings, but it was pretty unusual to see it at 1:20 in the afternoon when it was 96 degrees and dry.
Mark wanted to go into the garage to get some magazines out of the other car. This is when the real fun began. I hit the clicker to open the garage as Mark got out of the car. Suddenly, he's saying, "Shut the garage door! Shut the garage door!" I did.
He got back in the car and said there was a snake in the garage. He didn't want it to GO into the garage, so that's why he said shut the door, but once I shut the door he realized it was already INSIDE the garage. I opened the door again and got a good look at it.
Yup! That was a snake all right.
It wasn't a nice ordinary black snake. We see those around here and there, often in the bushes near the pools, but we have never seen any kind of snake in our garage. This one was a kind I have not seen before. It was very, VERY thin. It was a grayish color, but neither of us got close enough to it to notice if there were any markings. It seemed to be about a foot and a half long. It was lying fairly loosely coiled with its head up just inside the garage door. We know it wasn't there earlier in the morning because we went in the garage and backed the car out right where it was lying. There is a small gap at both corners of the garage door where we can see light shining through. Insects and small lizards or frogs could easily get through there. We've actually seen a lizard go in and out, but I always thought it was too small for a snake. WRONG! This is a very skinny snake and I really think he went right through that gap. Great. Now I'll always be afraid in my garage.
So, what to do? My Mark is now my hero! He went in the house through the front door and came out into the garage through the laundry room with a dust mop in hand. He walked up very close to the snake with the mop out in front and gave it a big shove right out of the garage. I was trying to keep my eye on it, safely from inside the car. I saw him push it and then I never saw it again. It's like it just vanished. We hope it landed in the bushes off to the side of the driveway or hit the pavers and slithered super fast into the bushes. In any case, it was no longer visible. We closed the garage door and went about our errands. But I can tell you our adrenalin was PUMPING!
Later we decided the scenario went like this. The snake saw the little frog as lunch. Froggy ran up the wall of the house to escape, but Snakey thought he went through the gap into the garage. Snakey went in to look for him. All this must have transpired shortly before we came out the front door for our errands. Hey, it's as good a story as any.
Our errands were very successful. Mark got his week's supply of new comic books. Then we went to the Polk County Health Department where he got two Sharps containers. And we finally got library cards. The Haines City library was very beautiful, large and spacious. It's only about 25 minutes from our house. Unfortunately it did not have any books in the Game of Throne series on the shelves. Too popular, I guess. We came home with no books.
I did all my exercises and ate only 1131 calories. It was a good day.
Today I have walked one mile in 23 minutes. Around 10 a.m. we will head to the pool for laps. Then Mark will do grocery shopping while I stay home and pay some bills, play with my new Manatee shaped jigsaw puzzle, and read on my Kindle.
This week we are going to eat all of our meals at home. That's a rarity, for sure. It should be a great week for another good weight loss.
Enjoy your Thursday!
It may have looked like a dust mop, but in my head I got that snake's attention by firing off my six shooter. Then, I lassoed it with my riata and dragged it outside. At least, that's how it went in my head.
ReplyDelete