Monday, June 20, 2005

Highways, Snakes and Heart Attacks, Oh My!!

What a weekend. The most unbelievable thing happened as we started our weekend. After a long day of cleaning, packing and yard work, we headed out for Roanoke, VA to get our couples massage we so desperately deserved. As we headed north on 421, just cruising along at about 80 mph, talking about mundane regular stuff, I heard Jeff yell and felt the car swerve. I thought maybe something had flown in the window and landed on him, but when I glanced over, there was about 5 inches of a SNAKE coming out from around the steering wheel and looking right at Jeff. He pulled over and when we both looked again, he was gone. We had no idea where it was and we thought we'd both hallucinated. It had come out of where the headlights lever is. We looked everywhere and found him wrapped around the steering column in the dashboard. We popped the dashboard off and pulled him out. I was just going to throw him in the woods and go on. Jeff started scrambling for something to put him in, so the snake just laid there in the floor board, I guess just not sure where to go. Jeff comes back with my trunk toolbox and spends a good 5-6 minutes trying to get him in. After he was locked in, we popped the dash back on and got back on the road.

Jeff then decided he needed something better to put him in, so we went to the pet store at the Four Seasons Mall in Greensboro and got one of those little critter keeper boxes so he could at least have some air. Plus this way, we could look at him. He's about 2 feet long and dark gray with irregular shaped black markings. He's not poisonous, but we have no idea what kind of snake he is. I think that's the biggest reason Jeff kept him. We have no idea how the hell he got in the car, or how long he'd been there...but I had the heebie jeebies for the next hour or so. What kept getting to me was that I was going to drive!! I would've wrecked and killed us..I have no doubts about that. Jeff did an incredible job and is better in tense situations than I am. I owe him for his calm and quick thinking because like I said, I would've just freaked the hell out and wrecked trying to get away from it. I'm also glad it was still daylight outside because if it had been dark, we'd never have known it was there..until it started slithering up Jeff's arm or leg...then we surely would've wrecked.

Anyhow, even though it scared the crap out of both of us, we have a pretty cool story to tell, and the snake to prove it. He's curled up in the terrarium right now, but I think we'll release him after we figure out what kind he is. The rest of the weekend was pretty good..awesome massage, good food and some time with family. We never got to see Hannah or Ronnie & Misti, but since it was Father's Day, it's good we got more time with family. I'm still tired though...it was a long weekend. I just hope the coming weeks are even a little boring. I've had enough excitement to last me for quite awhile!!!

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