Creepy Crawly....

So my friend Kate wrote about her adventure with a cricket, which inspired me to recount our adventure last Sunday.

As Ryan and I were sitting on the couch at about 10pm, our cat, Jezzy jumped off the couch and ran over to the side of the TV.  (The TV is up agains a half wall that is right behind the stairs that lead to outside)....
Jezzy jumped forward and then quickly learched backwards and her tail poofed out like it only does when she's freaked out!

Immediately, I looked at Ryan and said, "What is she freaking out about?"

"I don't know, think it's fly?"  He asked....

"no way, she doesn't do that for a fly... I bet its another freaking spider!!"

(You must understand that over the past three months we found two huge spiders  in the apartment, the first being in Madison's bed!!!   The second in the living room!  They looked much like this: )

Then I get up to go check it out.  Behind the TV, Ryan has his work bag and a few wiffle ball bats and a baseball bat.  So I start pulling that stuff out out while Ryan is standing behind me and suddenly he starts screaming,

"OH MY GOD!! HOLY SHIT, HOLY SHIT!!!"

At this point, I can't see what he's screaming about and for a second I wonder, "Is he trying to freak me out, but wait, he wouldn't scream that loud if he was, he's going to wake up Maddie".... and then he screams,

"ITS A SNAKE!!!!!!"


At that moment, he grabs the baseball bat and starts slamming it on the floor...

BLUDGEONING THE SNAKE!!!!!!!!


And as soon as he realized what he was doing, he dropped (or threw) the bat and ran out of the room.... Did I mention my husband is petrified of snakes?  I mean seriously petrified!

So then I look down and see that this said snake is not coiled up anymore like it was when he first stopped beating it, instead it had uncoiled and was moving!!!

I picked up the bat and continued beating it!!!

I realized that there was blood all over the bat and the rug...  and there was a terrible smell, and the fricken snake was STILL moving!!!

So I beat it a few more times, and Ryan crouched in the corner watching as I grabbed a paper towel and put it in a large ziplock bag (because I wanted our facilities manager to see it and tell me that it's friends and family would not be coming back! - and it's protocol around here that if you find a bug or something you're supposed to save it so they can identify and spray or whatever they need to do to make sure its friends don't come around...)

As I was carrying the bag (btw I double bagged it) to Joe (our Facilites Manager's office) I realized the damn thing was still moving!!! GROSS!!!!!!!!!!!

I've done my best to identify what type of a snake it was, and it was NOT an innocent garter snake, as many would assume!! 

This is the best picture we have of what it looked like: 



We also are not positive how it got in the apartment, other than a carpenter coming to look at our door (which until the other day had a small hole at the bottom of the door sweep) who thinks that is how it and the large spiders got in....

Ryan was so freaked out all night long... when I came back from bringing the bludgeoned snake to Joe's office, Ryan was sitting on the edge of the couch staring at the corner of the room where the snake was....
He said, "You need to job search - we can't stay here"

I reminded him that once at RIC when I lived there, Jezzy caught and killed a small garter snake while I was away one night... so really, this could happen anywhere we live....

Either way, it was disgusting, we still freak anytime Jezzy jumps up to go look at something... and we're pretty proud of our white furball for saving our lives!!!