My very proper French mother is so scared of snakes, she'd delete my blog from her bookmarks if she ever saw this post. To be honest, snakes make me a little edgy, too. I was up here at the barn yesterday morning, about to prop open the tack room door when the stick I was reaching for moved. And then it looked at me.

You know how one minute you're standing in one place and a second later, you're 20 feet away and you don't know how you got there? Add a bit of screaming and moaning and that was me. (That was I?) I was the one making noise, that's for sure. My friend, Ken, is still laughing at the voice mail I left in which all I could say was "Snake. Snake? Snake!" But my new neighbor (who, by the way, is close to four feet long and lives in the lavender) turns out to be a Pacific gopher snake. Eats the little varmints who tunnel through my garden, so I'm happy to follow the Prime Directive and let it be. Ken's happy to have a good snake. And a good laugh.