The door was open - as usual - Tikki was by the door - as usual - when she let out a shriek, leapt up in the air backwards and took a flying leap up onto the couch. There was a ssssssssssssssssssssssnake slithering in and to say that I do not like snakes is an understatement. I am TERRIFIED of them. ....Tikki barked, I screamed, and it slithered away. Needless to say I pulled the door shut but there is a slight gap under the door and I kept thinking maybe it could get under it. It did not, at least it has not......yet......but I would not open the door for ages in case it was still lurking somewhere outside!
Oh dear, I do hope it is a harmless one. Perhaps it would be best to look it up online and find out. We used to have harmless grass snakes swimming in the canal at our last address. One night Chas spotted a snake in the garden, only a young corn snake - they are quite pretty. I bagged it, and the RSPCA inspector collected it the following day. I imagine that would be a tank escapee. I'm not exactly fond of snakes, but I have had to handle a few in the past - nothing poisonous or too aggressive though. Chas narrowly avoided stepping on a female adder when Mum was in Scotland. Fortunately she didn't strike, I certainly didn't try to pick that one up!
Unfortunately Carole, there are quite a lot of of snakes here are venomous and I have seen posters up in the hospital ER in town showing which ones require which antivenom. One Shabbat I opened the door at the bungalow I lived in when I first came to the Moshav and there was a rather large snake sprawled across the doorway - I very nearly tripped over it as well. Screamed my head off and luckily there was a group of men just coming from the Synagogue, who rushed over, kept hitting it with something until it was well and truly deaded and put it in the wheelie bin. Then told me that it was a really nasty one. That is one of the reasons I am so fussy about keeping the weeds down and sprayed regularly, so I have no idea how this one got to my door [the other place just had a narrow path across the front of the bungalow and then a path up to the road, and usually plenty of weeds in the yard. I did not have a dog then, just Kat, who never used the door but used to go out and come in through the window. Lexi came along when I was living at the second place on the Moshav, and that shared a fairly decent lawn with the place next door, and they used to keep it mowed as they had a tribe of young children. Avner, who used to run the macolet, had a yellow Lab that he lost to a snake bite a few years ago. Sad. I definitely do not like
