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."