Hold On to Your Britches... There was an Intruder

I met someone the other day...  it ended so badly that I took a shot at him.  I know, I know...shame on me.  But, really, in my shoes, you would have done the same.  I mean, he reeked of venom...have you ever met anyone like that??  A being such that one look into their eyes, and your body gives an involuntary shudder... your skin starts crawling till you've got a handful of flesh huddling up in your armpit... nevermind that you're so freaked out your knees are knocking and you've got sweat streaming from your pores...

I walked out of the house into the warm, humid day..  milk bucket swinging in my hand...  and headed for the goat pen/feed shed.  I sat the bucket down, opened the shed door, reached over and flipped off the power to the fence, and leaned over to take the lid off the goat feed barrel.  As I leaned over, I came face to face with ... a freakin' intruder in my goat pen!!! I sharply sucked in my breath   and do you know what my next thought was??  

Yes.  I did.  I asked ...(that's a lie....I didn't ask)...I said, "Hurry!  Go get the camera."..  Sadly, I did not think on safety first...  I didn't remove myself from the danger.  I simply felt the primal urge to capture him ... albeit, not in a net.  or trap.  But in a picture.  Sad.

You want to see him, don't you?

Well, okay.  I mean, if you intrude on someone's property and are the cause of a subsequent change of pants, then you deserve to have your picture pasted all over cyberspace.

I did feel some measure of relief to notice that he had already eaten his AFTER dinner mint.  (see empty wrapper)

{{{SHIVER}}}

I bet your flesh is huddled under your armpits right now.  It's okay...  you're in good company.

AFTER, I took a picture of him, I decided that something needed to be done.  Mainly because the animals still had to be fed and I wasn't going to go about my business dipping feed out of the barrel that HE was hiding behind.  So, I went to the house to get the .... means of disposal.  When I came back, I leaned over the barrel to see if he was still there, and all I could see was his tail sticking out from under the barrel.....  Guess where his head was????     It was under the barrel. The barrel sits on a board.  There is about two inches between the board and the ground.  This is the space he was occupying.  Okay.  Now.  Guess where my flip flop clad foot was?  OMGAH....it was within breathing distance of his pointy little head.   ...btw..my toe still shudders and curls under when I think back on it...  

So, I back up...  and think...okay, I'll just shoot up under the board and surely I'll hit him, right?  Right. And then I think ....hmmmmm...what if he comes darting out IF I miss?  Should I lay on the milking stand and shoot sideways?  Nah...  because, technically, he could come darting out, make straightway for the stand, and I will have to go from a lying position to a pooping my pants standing position in like 2 seconds... or however long it would take him.  So, cross that out.  I finally decide on standing about three feet a safe distance away..and I shoot.  I think I may have possibly closed my eyes when it went off.  I did that on purpose.  I was saying a Hail Mary for him.  Turns out I didn't need to, though.  Because I missed.  He crawled away safely under the goat pen...do I need to remind you that the goat pen and milking stand snuggle as closely together as lovers?  Have you ever milked a goat while holding a ...means of disposal?   Okay, neither did I.  Because you can't.  Unless you have a means of disposal holster.  Ohhhh...I need to get one of those.  I could wear it with my bandana and pigtails...and boots. 

PS  Oh.  That was a venomous copperhead.