YES! There was a GIGANTIC snake on my kitchen floor this afternoon!!! OMG times a million!!!

OK, it was probably between 3 & 4 ft. long... but OMG!!! When a 3-4 foot snake is hanging out in your eencie-weencie galley-style kitchen, it's motherf•ckin' HUGE!!! Especially when you're just auto-pilot-cell-orbit-wandering into the kitchen at 3:30 in the afternoon, on a highly important phone call with a client in which we were solving some potentially huge problems with projects and Chinese printers and the latest "super urgent" needs with deadlines that defy physics and/or linear time, et. al... just as we had resolved the issue of the "this too urgent at once" email (verbatim Chinese subject line) regarding Stretch Cord packaging (ie: box vs. hang card), I caught a glimpse of a shadow or something moving below me... I looked down... and there... 12" from my bare feet, lined neatly along the kitchen cabinet base on the floor... was the snake. I shrieked over the phone, which must have sounded pretty bizarre to my client, as I started yelling like a 13 year old, "OH MY GOD!!! THERE'S A SNAKE IN MY KITCHEN!!! AND IT'S RIGHT THERE!!! ON THE FLOOR!!!! BY THE SINK!!!!  OH MY GAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDD!!!!!!"

My client just laughed (we've worked together since 1994) and said, "Sounds like you need to go - so do I". (yes, he had been trying to escape my interrogation-style phone call for several minutes - I think he was most relieved that Mr. Snake decided to lounge on my galley floor at that moment...)

So I ended the call and stood there for a second, thinking "ok, what do I do?" Immediately I sprang into crisis management mode and ran for my camera. On the way back to the snake, I realized that I should probably put on some shoes... and get something long to coax the slithery intruder back outside with. So I grabbed my ugly, yet rubber crocs for my bare feet and my 31-year-old stolen fencing sword (compliments of the University of Iowa Phys Ed Dept in 1978)

With the fencing sword in one hand, I proceeded to shoot some... well, rather blurry and not well composed shots of the snake on my kitchen floor, just to document this unprecedented event that got my adrenaline pumping again. After the first shot flashed, Mr. Snake got camera shy ad started heading into my pantry... a perfect hiding place for a snake, as there's tons of "stuff" in there offering multitudes of hideouts. So I instinctively squatted into the classic fencing "alle" position, pointed my plastic-tipped sword at my serpentine trespasser, and began gently pushing him toward the back door. At one point, Mr. Snake decided that he did NOT want to go that way and got all snaky and slithery and weird... so I smacked the tip of the foil onto the tile floor just in front of Snake. Interestingly, he seemed to respect that. He did not want to be whacked like that (tho I wouldn't have whacked him, unless I felt truly threatened with snakebite action). I continued my hard tapping combined with gentle herding nudges on Mr. Snake. Eventually he slithered back under the back door (with a now-realized HUGE gap between door and floor) and onto the back porch.

Once out of the house, Snake made a bee-line for the area between my big cooler and the wall. By this point, Mojo caught on that there was something interesting happening so immediately volunteered to help. Yeah, no. I put Mini-Mo in the house (much to his chagrin) and proceeded with my photo documentation and fencing foil nudging to see that Mr. Snake found his way back into the wilds of West Asheville, but not before a couple more pics.

Funny, I was just recently thinking, "things have been kind of boring lately... no good adrenaline rushes...".

"Careful what you think."

Yes, I said poo... as in poop. You're going, "what?" 

Let's face it - while we all know poo is just the result of a natural bodily function, bla bla bla, the word, itself still makes us giggle like fourth graders, and we often grimace or shriek and recoil in disgust at the sight of it - especially poo that is "out of place".

So Sunday morning I was out in my little veggie garden, plucking some green beans from my amazingly productive few magic bean stalks. After loading a pocketful of my little harvest, I noticed something "out of place" on my gate post. It was a neat little pile of poo, about the size Mojo tends to produce. Did I shriek or go "eeewwwww!" or freak out in any way? No, I giggled.

You see, the previous Friday night, my friend Jenn was passing out little mini-flyers for her friend who was having a yard sale of cheap tchochkies, including "fake poop". Of course I found this delightfully intriguing, and exclaimed, "Fake poop? Hell yeah! I need some of that!" 

Well, the ever-attentive Jenn didn't let my enthusiasm for the pretend poo go unnoticed. She purchased said bogus poo at her friend's sale Saturday morning, knowing full well that I would probably not get up early enough to get there before the poo was all gone.

So now I have the most disgustingly real looking clay fake poo, which has already produced hours of hilarity through it's practical jokeiness via its perceived disgustingness. The funniest part is watching how long it takes others to notice the little load of counterfeit caca, even when placed in plain view on the top of the picnic table at which they're sitting. Ha! 

Now about the traveling thing - my friend, Helen stopped by today and actually noticed the stunt-poo fairly quickly, as it was sitting on a tropical print paper plate on my little back patio table-ette. She exhibited the proper poop-out-of-context aversion with her rather alarmed expression, then asked "What is that?!" I casually replied, "Oh, Mojo loves to sit on that table and I guess he left me a little present", at which point I reached down and picked up the faux-poo and waved it in the air. More hilarity ensued, of course. (Incidentally, Mojo would never do such a thing. He is the world's most perfect little doggy who even remembers to put the toilet seat down when he's finished.)

Yeah, these are the good times - made even better by plasticine poo. Who knew? 

Of course, Helen was equally enamored by the little brown treasure and asked if she could borrow it to pranksterize her darling husband, Zen. Zen, of course, will also want to borrow said treasure to "entertain" his workmates. Helen, by the way, is the ultimate merry prankster, so of course it makes sense that the first handoff of the traveling poo should be to her. 

Now the sisterhood thing - no, this does not mean the imitation poo must be passed along to a female. As I already mentioned, Zen will undoubtedly carry the dummy-dung for a period, so that dispels that myth right there. In fact, sometimes I call Zen "Sista-man" and he actually responds (after laughing his butt off). 

So, yes - the sham-poo began its journey with Sister Jenn, then traveled around my back yard with Sister Me, and now travels with Sister Helen... then on to Sister-man Zen... then on to another... then another. Hopefully in the end, this will be one of the most well-traveled fake poos ever. I would encourage all my "Sisters in pseudo poo" to take photos and document the more creative "out of context" locations of our little repli-poo. Stay tuned...

Below are a few of my own pics of the phony poo in various settings... yeah, 4th grade mentality, to be sure.

  

(left: impostor poo appears on my garden gate;  right: beer vase & ersatz poo on my picnic table)

  

(left: Chaz BBQ's chicken with imitation poo in foreground; right: succulents & plastic action hero fleeing from synthetic poo)