My Mom is Ready to Defend Her Swing...Again.

Many of you recall my recent story of my mom and the snake that is huge at her swing. If you have missed this must read, you can catch up here.

My mom has tried to resign herself to the fact the snake, in fact, is staying under the swing. When the huge blue racer sees my dad, it slithers quickly away. And so a 'happy normalcy' has settled upon the quaint homestead of my parents.

Until the other day.

My mom called me. The conversation went a little like this...

Mom. "You will never ever guess what."

Me. "What?"

Mom. "THE SNAKE....(by the way, this is all she calls it now. THE SNAKE. We all know whom she means.)...it has relatives."

Me. "Oh. No."

Mom. "Yes. I went out to the chicken coop...barefoot...because why wouldn't I? And there, in the corner, stuck in a corner by a fence, is a three or four foot blue racer."

Me. "What did you do?"

Mom. "Screamed and ran all the way to the house."

Me. "I guess I would too. Is it still there?"

Mom. "How would I know? I'm waiting for your Father to get home. But you know he will let it out to meet up with the rest of the snake family."

I know this too. My Dad just can't kill them. He has too much respect for a large snake like these are.

And Blue Racers keep Rattlesnakes away, he reasons, so they are WORKING snakes.

My mom would agree. They work hard at keeping her from her chickens and her swing.

So she calls me yesterday.

Mom. "I have a snake update for you."

Me. "Great! I need to do a blog post update anyhow."

Mom. "You know how it was weird storming this weekend? Well, it was raining and the sun is shining so I thought I would try to go out to the swing. I haven't seen THE SNAKE for a little while now so I thought it would be safe. So your sister and Baby Back-up went with me since they were over. Well, Baby Back-up picked up a broken hoe and she began to hit the platform the swing is on and guess who decided to see what was going on."

Me. "THE SNAKE."

Mom. "Yes."

Me. "What did you do then?"

Mom. "I screamed. Your Father got a good chuckle out of that. He was up at the house and he heard me scream and he knew exactly what had happened."

Me. "What did my sister do?"

Mom. "She told me it's a natural thing, a snake, and there was nothing to be afraid of. But," mom chuckled, "she had her feet up in the air like me with Baby Back-up squeezed tight in her arms."

Me. "What did THE SNAKE do?"

Mom. "Raised it's head, stuck it's tongue out at me and went back under the swing."

Me. "How did you get off the swing."

Mom. "We jumped as far as we could and ran for the house."

Secretly, I would have laughed had I seen this. I mean, I would have done the same thing, but I sure would have loved to see my mom and my sister holding her little daughter jumping as far as they could off a swing and running for the house.

So, when I was walking out the door today to spend an afternoon with a friend and seen my mom call, I picked up wondering what story she had for me this time. All our conversations of late seem to be about the snake or get around to the snake and since we had just spent the morning chatting, I figured a new story was about to be told.

Mom. "Have you been watching the news?"

Me. "No. Why?"

Mom. "I just would have never believed it if I hadn't just seen it on the news....did you know that there is AN ALBINO PYTHON loose IN MY COUNTY??????"

Here's the thing. She is right. According to Fox 17 and many other area news stations, there is an ALBINO PYTHON on the loose. It is literally less than ten miles from her house, this huge albino python no one can find but lots of people have seen and the news is advising people to keep small pets in sight so as not to be eaten. Ten. Miles. From. Her. SWING.

Honest.

It's so crazy I just can't make this stuff up.

It's huge. They have people searching for it and still can't find it.

Mom. "Here's the thing. I just know THE SNAKE is sending radar out to that albino python saying "come live here! This swing is great!""

And see, we KNOW how far a snake can travel. My mom is a nervous wreck, and will be less a nervous wreck when the python - the PYTHON, people! - is caught. Then she will just have THE SNAKE to worry about....and maybe it won't seem so bad if a python isn't there.

Maybe.

But I doubt it.