We Do Not Play With Snakes!

Olivia and Zachary were playing outside last Thursday, had gone to the garden to smell the beautiful flowers. All of a sudden I hear Olivia start crying, you know, a painful-quickly-moving-on-to-hysterical-panicked cry. So I started going out to our deck when I heard Zach start to cry too. My first thought was that they must have somehow upset a wasp nest, and then I thought, but it's too chilly for those yet. So I run out to the deck and see Olivia standing there screaming, and then out of the corner of my eye I see a little snake quickly moving under our picnic table. Olivia had gotten bitten on her finger by the snake, Zachary no bites; both were scared out of their wits. Thankfully, we knew it was a Northern water snake and not poisonous, but still called the nurse hotline to see if we should go in to the ER or not. We decided not to, and she was fine, just shook up quite a bit. Here's the amazing part: Olivia found the snake in the garden, somehow managed to catch it, and was carrying it up to our house to show us her new find! And once she got onto the deck it bit her!!! Oh my! We're just happy that nobody was seriously hurt and that an important lesson was learned.

Scott managed to catch the snake in a huge box:

Close-up of snake:

We decided not to kill it, so we set him free in the woods:

Bye-bye Snake!