Where is St. Patrick When You Need Him?

Okay, I love my farm. But it is starting to develop a serious flaw in my view. We are talking about snakes, here. LOTS of snakes.

Back in the day there was this crazy singer who had a song about his girl that went "She don't like spiders and snakes..." and those lyrics could have been about me. I am arachnophobic in a HUGE way. I am Andrew Jackson and spiders are the Indians - the only good one is a dead one. No exceptions. It did not even help that I loved Charlotte's Web as a story, I still found Charlotte more than a little creepy. And all those little babies of hers gave me the positive heebie-jeebies.

Snakes, however, are something of a mixed bag with me. When I was a kid, I carried my share of garter snakes around in my pocket. I had pet snakes. I even wanted a python at one point. With snakes, it is all about context and numbers. For example, on the morning of my oldest son's first birthday party, my husband and I went canoeing with friends. This was in north Louisiana, on a lovely shaded small river that twisted and turned its way under the trees festooned with vines. Suddenly, the girls in the canoe in front of ours were STANDING (in a canoe, this is just not done), waving their arms and screaming like banshees. I was wondering what in the name of heaven was their problem when I had a most disquieting realization. THOSE WERE NOT VINES. They were many many snakes, and at least one had dropped into the canoe in front of us. My poor son almost did not have either a party or a mama, because heart failure was right around the corner had my husband not gotten our canoe turned around STAT.

So, little snake in my pocket -good. Big snake in my pocket - bad. Little snake in the grass - good. Big snake on my porch - bad. MANY little snakes in the grass - approaching not very good at all. Anything that can be described as my daughter did this evening as a NEST of snakes - very very not good. It is one thing to have an individual snake on your hands, you can relate to even a snake one on one. Some of them are even kind of cute, in a slithery way. You can admire their considerable muscular tone, all of that. But there is something about large numbers of snakes that just crosses the line. Did you see the Indiana Jones movies? Somewhere in there he seemed to always have to face snakes, and once it was massive numbers of them in a confined area, and I thought I might have to leave the theater.

So now, we have snakes on the farm. The first time Kate said "Oh, I found a snake today" I was minimally curious, unconcerned. When this progressed to "Wow, I saw FOUR SNAKES today!" my level of interest was beginning to rise, my skin feeling just a little creepy crawly. This evening, she points out to me the space from my side door to the garage - not over 15 feet - in which she found 4 snakes,and describes the "snake family" she encountered, and relates the delightful news that there is "nest" of them over on the other side of the garage.

Did I mention that we are eating outside and I am in flip-flops??? The urge to shriek was rearing its ugly head, I was beginning to get that tickly feeling between my tummy and throat that has something to do with nausea and bad things happening, and an escape plan should a snake nest encounter suddenly take place became a matter of the highest priority.

So, OK, all you country dwellers out there, questions abound: (1) What kind of snakes do we have in the Willamette Valley, what do they eat, and who do they like to bite? (2) Is there an environmentally friendly (i.e., something short of incinerating my entire property with flamethrowers) method of, shall we say, discouraging the snakes from taking up residence here? Some method that involves neither physical contact on my part nor calling animal control in Marion County? Those people already know who I am.

How did St. Patty do it anyway? Maybe I need Harry Potter to come do his snake-whispering magic and tell them all to go away. Ideas, people, I need ideas. I do not want to be driven to desperate measures. If you see flames or hear shrieking from the direction of Evans Valley, I wasn't even in the neighborhood when it happened....