Frogs & Snakes–Boys delight!

Good morning Everyone!  WOW you all are so awesome!  The comments are pouring in for a chance to win a free copy of Rain’s debuting novel! (See yesterday’s post for more details)  YAY!  Keep them coming–6 more days before the drawing.  And remember the more you comment, the more times your name will go in the bowl for the drawing.  Two books are being given away.  Comments from all my sites and places this is posted count. 

(edited:I just discovered my link for Rain on yesterday’s post was inserted incorrectly–I can fix it some places, but not everywhere.  Use today’s.  Sorry!)

Last weekend we went to a family reunion and a couple of blocks from the hall where it was taking place there was a river.  Where do you think the boys wanted to hang out?  It was hot out and of course all the shade was on the other side of the river because the small town had cleared this side for a mini park and boat landing but…that didn’t stop the boys.

They wanted to go swimming…doesn’t this just look like the most awesomest spot to do just that?

But they had this sign there…

So they did the next best thing–they caught frogs.

(I have like a gazillion pictures of frogs…once I took a picture of one then all the kids thought I should get one of one they’d caught…you know because that one was the best.  :-)  )

But where you find frogs in abundance, what else do you think you find?

Yep, snakes.  They saw one poke it’s head out here and of course, what do boys do?  Stick a stick down after it to see if they can’t scare it out. 

But they needn’t have bothered–they were in abundance too.

My oldest is so after my very own heart…all he wanted to do was catch them. But dang, we’re in poisonous snake country! Its not like where I grew up, where apparently its too cold for anything poisonous to survive cause I never had to worry about that. I just caught until my heart was content. And its been at least 10 years since I caught a snake. Was I even sure that was a gardener snake? (just for the record–they all were gardeners or I wouldn’t have let the kids be down there)

So he ‘touched’ a tail on one. Another ran over the middle son’s foot–it was goofy. I saw this big one emerge out of the grass and told him to watch out, not sure how he felt about them. (He’s not as vocal as my oldest) So what does he do? Turns and runs right into it!! Stops when I yell to stop because I was certain he was going to step right on it! Then to my amusement, the snake simply lifted and slid right over his foot, him totally unaware, panicking, looking everywhere for this ’snake’ with no clue it was right on him. Oh yeah, I laughed.

We can’t forget there is water here. They can’t go in. Even wading is discouraged…undercurrents aren’t something to play with and between you and me…I did not feel like getting all muddy and wet if I were to have to retrieve them. So they were banned from getting wet.

But they sure contemplated ways to play with that water.

They tried it one way…

Then another…

Until finally…my oldest fell in!

I don’t have a picture because I was too busy reprimanding.  Water time was done.  So while he dried out by running around a field with the others–kind of worked, I sought a cool place to sit…

Now this was incredibly cool…

It’s a snake skin in its entirety!  Head and everything!  Most skins we found were partials.  We had to keep it.

Except that, my hubby hates snakes.  Really, really hates them.  One look at that skin lying there on the dashboard of our van and, well…lets just say we were not going anywhere until it was removed from the van.

Can you tell by the expression on 4’s face…this was not a popular dictate.  But…I was ready to head back to the hotel and if my driver wasn’t going to even get in the vehicle until that snake skin was gone…

We left it there for some other lucky soul to discover.

Cole