Dangerous Liasons with Snakes

Crotalus scutulatus ( Mojave Rattlesnake ), originally uploaded by Mr Nikon.

I was staying at grandma's house and finding myself frustrated that there were no toothbrushes around to use. I'm not sure why I expected there to be one since grandma hasn't kept one there for me in the better part of a decade.

I looked out the window and saw that the yard was flooded. It wasn't swampy like the last time (within the dream, I still recalled my previous dream), just wet. I could see a few small fish (a goldfish kept watching me as I moved around the window) and some water bugs. After some more searching in the house, I went outside.

There was plenty of room to walk around the flooding, so I went over and sat on one of the walls in the yard. Frogs were jumping around in some of the puddles, so I watched them. When I bent down, I realized there was a hole in the wall so that you could see under where you were sitting.

I saw the back end of a snake and froze. Rattlesnake. When I turned, I saw that I was right beside the front end. Sophie (one of our dogs) wasn't far away, and I didn't want to act too strangely because I was worried that she might come over to check out what was going on. Instead I started backing off slowly. Well, the snake didn't like that a bit and coiled up to strike.

Somehow I managed to grab it, but once I had it, I was too scared to cut its head off. I stabbed it a few times in the neck with my pocket knife, but it was still alive. It followed us, so I caught it again and held it so it couldn't bite. When I got inside, I was freaking out and explained to mom what happened. She chided me for not killing it and then chopped its head off herself.

We were then preparing to take a trip with grandma, and I was disappointed because I'd forgotten to bring any music at all for the drive. Before we got much further than that, the alarm woke me up.