I thought I would take a little break from the computer on this nice sunny day, so I did something that I’ve been giving lip service to for two years. I raked up a big pile of grass cuttings from the latest lawn mowing to put in the compost bin. We’ve been throwing food stuff in there for 3 years but never anything else. So it never “cooks” (breaks down and turns into black gold). I have never even stirred it up. The grass cuttings do add some needed ingredients to get the compost cooking.

Now I’ve always been careful when opening the lid of the bin because when we moved here, the *very* first time I went out there (hmmm, early August, come to think of it, just like today) there was a snake hangng out on top of all of the stuff (left by the former owners (not the snake, the stuff!)). I have added to it once or twice a week all year round for three years since then and have never seen another one. Today, rather than carefully sliiiiiiiiding the lid just a bit to expose enough space for me to put my little compostable cornstarch bag of kitchen compost in, I just flipped the lid off onto the ground and of course – SNAKE! Just a garden snake, but it was not one those little 1/4 inch diameter ones. It was more like 1  or 1 1/2 inches around.

Needless to say, after my girlie shriek and jumping back, I abandoned the lid, my bag of grass cuttings and my little pitchfork for when Rich gets home. In the meantime, I hope the poor snake recovers from the probable minor heart attack he had. There he was, resting in a nice dark place before all of this happened!

I’m not really afraid of snakes. In fact, a college friend had an Indian Python named Eve that I got friendly enough with to actually put around my shoulders a few times. It’s just the *surprise* snakes.

shiver…