If it had been me, you'd have been prying me off the ceiling...

[cornermouse]

Family finds python under dishwasher

http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=3677336

Stefanie Leafty had just told her two children - ages 5 and 3 - to get ready for bed when she saw something on the floor underneath the dishwasher.

"I thought it was a toy, and I was going to pick it up," she said.

Leafty says her mixed-breed Jack Russell terrier ran to sniff the snake, and that's when it moved. Leafty pulled the dog away way by its hind legs and told her children to run out of the house.

"I've never screamed so high in my life," she said.

Good thing she pulled the dog back, the snake might have ate it.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. I live 100 miles from there

and I am freaked out. :scared:

[cornermouse]

2. No kidding.

Me too.

[tenshi816]

3. Many years ago,

I found a copperhead in my basement when I went down there to put some clothes in the dryer. It was a rented house in a well-established, older suburban part of Decatur, GA, so it was a real surprise to me. I called the owner of the house and first his advice was "stay out of the basement", but since that's where the washer and dryer were, it was hardly practical. I kept complaining until he called an exterminator, who came out and did something (I wouldn't go back into the basement with him to watch so I don't know what he did!) - whatever it was that he did must have worked because I never saw another snake in that house.

Later on I moved into a house in a rural area outside of Atlanta and once found the rattle from a rattlesnake in my washing machine (5 segments, so it must have been a big rattler), but no snake attached to the rattle. That was pretty frightening too, although I'm not altogether sure the rattle wasn't placed there by my vengeful ex to freak me out.

Thankfully we don't have things like rattlesnakes and copperheads in the UK!

[cornermouse]

4. I hate snakes.

I really do.

Does the UK have any poisonous snakes?

[tenshi816]

5. I think there's only one, if I remember correctly.

My hubby told me when I first moved here in 1986 that there were only two types of snakes in Britain, one poisonous and one non-poisonous, but there aren't huge numbers of either one (I think I'm right on that but maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part!). The poisonous one is a kind of adder that puffs up before it strikes, I believe.

Also, you know that old story about St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland? I read once that that was a myth, because Ireland never had any snakes to begin with. That's something I find interesting - but I don't know if it's true.

Snakes give me the heebie-jeebies and it's because there are just so damned many of them in Georgia, where I grew up. My dad and stepmother live in a really rural area in northeast GA and have 125 acres of land, most of it pine forest with a few trails cut into it. The first time my British husband visited them with me, we went for a walk in the woods with my stepmother. After walking about 50 yards into the forest, hubby looked around the dense undergrowth nervously and asked my stepmother if we needed to worry about poisonous snakes. "Nah", she replied, reaching into her jacket pocket, "I've got my gun" and she proceeded to pull out a .357 Smith & Wesson.

Poor guy, I don't know which he was more afraid of then, a potential snakebite or being shot by his new mother-in-law.