A Tale of Two Snakes

Last Tuesday night, on my way to a church meeting, at the end of the driveway I realized a sprinkler needed to be moved and the water turned on. Stopped the car and as I changed the sprinkler to its new location I spotted a snake in the tall grass, about 3 feet long and 10 feet away, who had stopped in its slither probably the same time as I'd stopped in my tracks. I live in rattlesnake country. I hate snakes, of any kind. Maybe they hate people too. Anyway, once the sprinkler was positioned and adjusted (one eye on snake who gratefully remained motionless, other eye on sprinkler...I'm probably cross-eyed) one of us moved to the safety of a 3,000 pound enclosed vehicle and reversed up the driveway all the way back to the hose bib to turn on the water. Once again at the street I wondered what reaction the slitherer had to being watered and stopped the car to watch. Well, it had crawled up on the cement base (about 6" wide) under a chain link fence and was now near the sprinkler but appeared confused as what to do next. On the other side of the fence is about an eight foot drop off. Begged the snake to take a dive to the other side -- it wasn't listening. So I decided to see if I could tell if it was a rattler but by now I was probably 15 feet or so from it. Oh my. The head seemed very triangular, often a sure sign, and when the tail raised up a bit it sure looked to me like there were several rattles on the end. YIKES. A teenaged rattler? Why didn't he give me a warning? Or was he as scared as I was? Anyway, I hurried and left and sure wanted it to slither back to its home, hopefully far, far away. After I got around the corner there was a V-8 moment when the thought came to me that the camera on my smartphone would have been perfect since once a picture is taken it can be zoomed in with incredible clarity. Lost opportunity. As for the whole episode: >shudder<

The other Snake?  If you look at the medical device used for an Endoscopic Ultrasound, then it's the one going down my throat next Tuesday that has a light and camera at the 'business end'; and that procedure is being done in an effort to narrow down, or determine, the cause of the "intense cellular activity" around my esophagus shown by the PET scan.

Why do Dr's have evil smiles sometimes?



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