Anaconda of The Ozarks

Yesterday afternoon, Paul tells me that there is a huge, like six-foot snake in the wood pile. 

Ok.  And your point is?

Well, after much insisting that I come out and "take care" of it (with some #8 shot), I go out to the wood pile to investigate this Anaconda of The Ozarks.

"Well, don't you see it?"

"Uhm, no."

"There, he just went under that log."

So I flip over a log or two and see the snake.  And decide that the gigantic serpent is not, in fact, so gigantic that it warrants splattering its slender body against our store of firewood.

So I grab the snake and take him (her?) into the house....

where he (she?) is put into a pillowcase.....

and driven down the road to be released into the "wild".

Normally, I wouldn't really consider killing a black snake unless it's a return customer to the hen house.  But when Paul said that it was a huge snake, I did consider the fact that if it were large enough, it could, possibly, maybe, theoretically, eat one of my cats. 

And another reason I even considered killing this supposedly enormous snake was that I just saw a darned near huge snake earlier in the day. 

I was walking up to the neighbor's house when I saw what looked like some type of road kill.  It was furry and had black scales.....like somebody had run over a snake and a squirrel at the same time.  But upon closer examination, I realized it was both a snake and a squirrel!  The snake was in the middle of swallowing a squirrel.  I had no idea that black snakes got big enough to eat big, fat, tree rodents.

Even though it was an impressively sized black snake, I still let it live.  I did remove it from the middle of the road though (i.e. picked it up by the tail & tossed it into the woods), but didn't bother to wait until he was finished swallowing the squirrel. 

I'm nice, but not that nice.

Paul's Take

The snake Carolyn picked up was obviously a different snake.  The huge snake must have slinked away while she was taking her sweet-old-time getting to the wood pile.