My battle with a COPPERHEAD!!

Before anyone freaks out...I won this battle. Yes, I am still freaking out about an hour later, but I did win this battle!! For everyone that knows me, you know that I'm terrified of snakes, much less poisonous ones. For the record, I did not know this was a copperhead until the battle was won. Okay, here's the story as it happened...

Ethan and I were inside playing when we heard Fletcher (our dog) going crazy outside in his kennel. It was his aggressive bark, but I just figured another dog or animal was in our back yard. I let him go on just for a minute and then I decided I better check it out. When I opened the door Fletcher was in his kennel (it's a rather large kennel, not one of those small travel ones) and he was just standing in the middle with his head looking down and the fur on his back standing straight up. If it had been another dog, Fletcher would have been all up on the fence of his kennel trying to get out, but he looked scared. I bit my lip and made myself go out to see what it was. As I had dreaded it to be, it was a SNAKE! A rather odd looking one to me, so this lead me to believe it might be poisonous. I don't know my snakes, but it was no black snake. It was light brown with dark brown markings, with a lighter head. Sorta just looked like a "copperhead", but that's just me freaking out on the inside (thinking it's the worst snake possible, as they all are to me) Surely it's just some rat snake or something. Well, it was right at Fletcher's kennel with his head rared up. Looked a little too interested in Fletcher. I grabbed a broom and I bravely started swatting towards it and banging on Fletcher's kennel, thinking I might scare it off. Instead, it quickly turned it's head and looked RIGHT AT ME!!!! I think I screamed a little and ran back to the patio to head inside. After doing my little "freak out dance" and calmed my chill bumps and my overall feeling of the "willies", I had to toughen up here. This was one of those moments where you have NO CHOICE!! Jeremy was at work, I was afraid that Fletcher might get too close to it if I let him out of the kennel, and I sure couldn't let it get any closer to Fletcher. Adrenaline pumping, motherhood instincts to protect her young (Fletcher in this case) I had to do something. No questions about it, I was going to have to do something. At first I tried the wimpy approach. I went back inside where Ethan was watching me through the window, headed to his room with a squirt bottle. He thought this was great. We opened up his window and squirted the snake. He cracked up!! He loves squirting things with our squirt bottle and the fact that I was using it to spray through a window to get a snake, he found very amusing. The snake didn't move as I had planned. He actually was moving closer to the kennel and I just knew that if he got in the kennel and got under the wooden pallets that are in the bottom of the kennel, it would have been over. He continued to slither along the side of the kennel and then he turned and started in around the dog house, which is also inside the kennel. This was my make it or break it moment. I had Fletcher out of the kennel at this time and I just had to leave him in the yard, make a mad dash for the garage to find some type of "weapon" and get back before he worked his way into the kennel. I found some flat hoe looking thing. With the handle it was about 3 feet long. The snake was about 2.5 feet long. I got close enough and with ALL THAT WAS IN ME, I forced the hoe thing right onto his head. I pushed with all of my might, screaming all the while!! I continued to push, and I wedged his head back and forth between my hoe thing and the ground. The thing that's going to give me nightmares tonight is the visual of his body flying through the air as I had his head trapped to the ground. Again, he was so long, his body was flying about .5 of a foot close to my hands. After killing this snake and hauling him out to the woods, I rushed inside and did another "freak out" dance. I grabbed my camera where I had taken some pictures from Ethan's window. I quickly got on the computer, downloaded my pictures and went to Ask.com and searched snakes. I found this one to verify that my snake battle had just been with a very poisonous COPPERHEAD SNAKE!!! Praise the Lord that Fletcher is okay and that I WON this battle with the snake. I hope that this is the last of my snake battles.

All of this long story to share my adventure of the day and for everyone to please be careful being outside, playing, cleaning, raking pine straw, cleaning gutters, etc. I had a patient a few years ago at Piedmont Fayette that had gotten bitten 3 times from a copperhead while cleaning his gutters. He just reached into leaves and pine straw and it struck him 3 times on the arm. He was very sick and in the hospital for a few weeks.
This was my picture of the snake on the left. The one below is from the website that verified this to be a copperhead.






Be Careful Out There!!