lucyoncolorado

In which my backyard is full of snakes...

It's early morning. I step out my back door and notice a giant red and yellow striped snake slithering around near my wood pile. I run back inside for my camera and snap a picture. I stare at the snake to try to identify it, but it's like nothing I've ever seen before.

As I'm studying the snake, I hear E scream from across the fence. I run over to see what's the matter, and I nearly trip over a huge rat snake along the way. I don't want the red and yellow snake (whatever it is) to kill the rat snake since I like to attract rat snakes to my property. So I bend down and pick the rat snake up and carry it with me over to the fence to see what E is screaming about.

When I get there, I see that E is standing on top of a picnic table. There is an impossibly large cotton mouth wrapped around the table's legs. It is at least 30 feet long, and it surrounds the entirety of the table. Its head is raised up in striking position, and E is standing very still hoping it will not strike her. I see her dilemma, and I run back to my shed to get my shot gun. I rest the barrel of the shotgun on the fence and aim at the cotton mouth; I still have the rat snake in my left hand. I pump the shot gun, but the cotton mouth recognizes the sound and it unwinds itself and hurries off out of E's yard and into the field behind our houses.

E comes down from the table and walks over to the fence. I tell her about the unidentified red and yellow snake. She says it is probably a coral snake. I reply that it's far to big for that, that there is no black on it, and anyway, its stripes are longitudinal - head to tail stripes- not rings. She then starts to laugh at me for saying longitudinal. I think about it for a second to see if I've mixed up the word, but no I'm talking about longitude and not latitude. I tell her this, and she laughs at me even more. She says that I mean horizontal, not longitudinal, because we are talking about a snake- not the planet.

Then E asks what I'm holding in my hand. I say that it's a rat snake and that I want to place it in my garden behind the shed so that it will eat mice. But she just laughs again and says that it's not a snake at all. She's laughing so hard there are tears running from her eyes and she can hardly breath.

I look at my left hand and see that she's right. I'm no longer holding a big rat snake. Instead, I'm holding a giant penis.