SNAKE!!

Luke LOVES to 'check the chicks' in the big barn with me. It's the highlight of his day. While I'm feeding the dogs and rabbits, he's dancing around me like a crazy man wanting to go to the barn.
Today is no different.

We go in, I pull the waterer loose so I can water the little chicks, while he runs around in the big room with the bigger chicks, looking for eggs from the two hens we just bought from Brother Marlin.

Suddenly I hear him yell "There's a snake in here!!"
I rush in, and sure enough, there is a HUGE bull snake. I grab Luke and shove him out the barn, telling him to go get daddy. He runs off while I watch this snake. In a minute, he's back, telling me daddy is getting something to kill him with. The light is out in the big barn room, so there is only light from the back door that's just covered with chicken wire, and there's a roof over that, blocking even what could come through there. I ask him how he ever saw that snake.

"I stepped on him" he says.

Oh please. I'm an old mommy. I worked really hard, fighting CPS to get this boy. And he comes to live with me, and steps on a snake.

I am NOT handling this very well. I even lay my hands on him and pray to thank God for not letting the snake bite him. He says the snake raised his head and hissed at him when he stepped on him.
I was raised in a house of girls...I don't do snakes and blood, even snakes that are not poison. If that snake had bite my child, they would have found me dead of a heart attack on the barn floor, I'm afraid.

My older boys cut the snake open, and inside was a huge baby rooster, which may have been why the snake did not bite Luke.

If someone asked me to move to the city today, I might actually be tempted to do it...