Slim Jim Tucker thought he was a dog.....

I let our pregnant English Bulldog out the back door to potty. After she took care of her business being afraid she might go under the porch, I walked out and dropped a lead over her head so she would know I was in control... I was for maybe a minute; until I almost stepped on the end of a snake's tail, laying out from the van parked just about 5 feet from the backdoor.

I rushed in to get my DH to come kill it and I should have known better. He grabbed my bamboo cane and I told him "NO" here's a hoe. We returned to find the snake and our cat asleep under the van not a foot apart, plus not five feet away, our three yard-dogs were scattered out taking their afternoon naps.

What did DH do, looked at the snake and pronounced it a harmless Rat Snake and was trying to move him back to the woods when the snake slipped the hoe and slithered swiftly into my tiny garden patch.

DH and I then had a "conversation" about said snake being harmless (he also once said a copperhead was harmless!!), to which I countered, do you call scaring me to death harmless!!!! I'm willing to take in another dog but not a stray snake ... sleeping in the yard with the other "strays that came to stay", just like it belonged here!!

A few days later, I either started being realistic (or I had fallen off the edge can’t settle on which) I decided if the cats and yard-dogs had truly accepted the snake, then it could be beneficial to have him as one of "our gang". The gopher or whatever it was is no longer eating my plants so it could be that Mr. Snake had it for a meal. Further rationalization dictates, I'll just have to get use to seeing him so I won't be startled ... surely I was not saying this!!!!

A week passed without a sign of the snake. One afternoon, I took a bowl of chicken & rice out for the yard-dogs and as I entered the house, I turned back to see if they were eating it, there it was slithering not 8 inches from the bowl, he came when I called the dogs!!!!

Boomer, a Beagle mix, had turned to follow me, but Slim's movement caught his attention so he started back ... not like he was on a hunt, but just to tell Slim the food was his. I told Boomer "no" and he made no further attempt to go back. My yard-dogs are hunting dogs, which kill snakes!! I couldn’t believe Fluffy, a 14 lb Spitz and Boomer are 18 inches from Slim, had sniffed the air therefore know he is there and aren't trying to kill him. I began to wonder if I lost my mind … this snake thought he was a dog.

For just about 2 months, all went well with “our gang” and the newest member who we had started calling Slim Jim Tucker. It was a nice fall day and I had the door open going in and out doing chores, then I happened upon him in the living room curled up asleep under a heat lamp set up to dry out some wood, so ended my patience with Slim Jim. It’s one thing for him to curl up with the yard-dogs and cats outside, but he wasn’t going to be allowed in the house. I got out the hoe. DH heard the commotion and got there just in time to save him. He tells me he took him miles down the road and turned him out in a field.