Poison of a serpent...Psalm 58:4

Although I did complete July with 31 blog posts, I certainly didn't continue the momentum through August! There has been way too much going on to actually sit down and blog, but here are some pics that M took of our adventures over the past week.

Warning: Pictures of a dead snake below. If you don't care to see pictures of the snake OR the dissection, just click away now. :)

Last Tuesday M announced that there was a rattlesnake outside his bedroom. He had been looking out the window and saw it slithering in the dirt near the retaining wall just behind our house. Too close! This is the second one (that we know of!) we've had near the house. J ran to the garden to get the hoes and The Man got the gun. I was impressed that The Man only fired three shots and the snake had four holes in it. The Man was dismayed that he didn't kill it with the first shot. We think the first shot (while the snake was moving) just shot off the rattles. We (not including me!) had to look around a bit to find them. There were at least nine rattles on this snake! The third shot was in the head, and other than the residual movements...it was dead. After removing what little was left of the head/fangs, The Man found a large glass jar in which to put the body. He put that into a cooler with some jugs of ice until he could get around to skinning it.

That time finally came on Sunday morning. We (again, not me!) started the process in the front yard. Pretty snake! Too bad it had to get so close to the house and my babies! Even G helped out with the process. The children finally had enough of the flies and other creatures that wished to watch and bother, so they came inside and let The Man carry on with his project. After The Man separated the skin from the rest of the innards, he came inside also...with the skin. He did ask where he should finish cleaning the skin. I told him wherever he could easily clean and disinfect the mess! He chose the bathroom counter. Ick. Ick, ick, ick. When he was done, he said he finally figured out a good reason for the "his and her" sinks in the master bathroom. I didn't complain when he rinsed the skin in "his" sink. Other than my house smelling like my high school zoology class (minus the formaldehyde) for most of the day, it wasn't that bad of a process. The skin is now hanging on the back porch.

The Man has his glycerin solution ready to tan it. I'm not sure what his plans for it beyond that are, but at least that snake won't be biting my kids or dog!

I will try to check in and blog more regularly, there just hasn't been a lot of extra time. No time? Hmmm...killing a snake, storing a snake, skinning a snake, and tanning the skin were not in our plans for the past week, but it is hard to predict those teaching/learning moments and work them into the schedule ahead of time.