I'm fine with Bambi hanging out in my yard. I've even learned how to live with the ticks. But... I just found a snake curled up in my cordless drill charger in my home studio. This is on a 40" tall workbench, so it's way off the ground. Bears, turkeys, coyotes, weasels & endless mice, chipmunks & squirrels that I see regularly I'm okay with. Snakes climbing up 3.5 feet to hang out next to my pickle pot..,, Not okay!! I'm not Crocodile Dundee. I'm more Indiana Jones. I hate snakes!!

I went into the house. Put on jeans, boots, my heaviest jacket & leather gloves. I modified some barbecue tongs to become snake-catching tongs. Dumped out the ashes from a galvanized steel ash can & looked up on Wikipedia to see what kind of snake it was. It's either a milk snake or a timber rattler. Given that timber rattlers are really rare in NH, I decided it was probably a milk snake, but I wasn't taking any chances.

I procrastinated endlessly, until finally I just decided to do it. Once I got close and slightly touched it, it woke up & moved really frigging fast behind the pickle pot. Now I was totally screwed. There was no turning back. I had to trust in my abilities as a metalsmith with my specially-modified-snake-catching-barbecue-tongs and in my head-to-toe safety equipment. The snake kept moving around as I moved objects on the workbench to expose it.

Finally there was a reasonable amount of snake exposed. I went in with my specially-modified-snake-catching-barbecue-tongs & grabbed it. It was stronger than I thought it would be. It wrapped itself onto a speaker cable, but I used my super-human, Indiana Jones-like strength, tossed it into the ash can and clamped the steel lid down tight. I had to walk around a little bit, to let my heart rate settle. Then I trekked about a half mile into the forest & let my new buddy out in a grassy meadow.

Everyone is afraid of something. For me it's snakes & heights. I took the day off today to work on reroofing my studio roof. Now it's onto the roof. I don’t care though. It's strange, but there is a strong sense of calm after confronting a fear. That said, if I ever find a snake inside any of my dwellings ever again, I’m frigging moving!!