My Mom Defends Her Swing

What I am about to tell you I did not witness, but it is all true, I promise you.

To understand this story fully, there are a few things you should know.

My mom has a swing that my oldest brother and my Dad built her. It sits up on a platform and it could easily fit four adults on its bench. They have planted daffodils and other flowers around it and you can find this swing as you follow the well mowed, well shaded, well flowered trail thru the woods until it opens up to the field below. It’s the place my mom sits to do her devotions, to watch the sunrise, the sunset, the storms coming thru, to read a book, to chat with my Dad...she loves this swing.

Also, to understand this story, I have to tell you about when I was little. My Dad took this field and had us plant asparagus. I swore I would never do this to my children (and then I did). Along the side of the asparagus patch is a long row of raspberry bushes. Ever since I can remember, there has been a Blue Racer snake in the asparagus patch and you would wait for it to slither away to his home somewhere in the raspberry bushes. The snake was just part of my childhood memories. It was always there.

The snake still lives.

Except now it’s reached a length of over six feet. And since it is so huge, it has decided it needed a bigger home. So it moved in under the swings platform.

My mom did not appreciate this.

But since the snake has lived so long, they decided that they just couldn’t kill it but that they should move it. So my oldest brother, who has had this snake chase and bite him in his childhood, and my dad somehow or another caught the snake as it slithered out, somehow wrangled it into a gunny sack and they moved it down the road, down another, and out deep in State land to live it’s life out in peace away from people.

My dad had guilt. The poor snake had been there so long.

My mom was joyful. She could enjoy her swing again. And even though it had been gone a few weeks, she never could break the habit of checking to see if it was sunning itself or not.

And it’s a good thing she did.

Because the snake came back.

How it slithered all those miles and found it’s way back under the swing, we aren’t sure. We are amazed at it. If one can feel awe for a snake, that’s about what it is. We fear the huge thing, but you have to give it credit.

When the snake sees my Dad, it slithers VERY quickly away.

My parents are trying to decide what to do. The snake obviously wants to stay, but they can’t enjoy the swing with it there, so they are trying to think of another, much farther away place, to take the snake to live out its days.

And we all will keep watch to see if he returns. While we don’t want him to, we sorta do too.