The snake in the Christmas tree

Thought you all could use a good laugh. I finally got my tree up the other day. It had been up in the attic over the garage. The lid of the box had gotten knocked open and a mouse apparently got in there and nested in the tree.

But what really ooged me out was a snake had apparently found not only was the tree a great source of dinner, it was perfect for rubbing off shedding skin. The darned tree had bits of snakeskin all over. If you could have seen me, picking out snakeskin and yelling, "Uuuuugh!" the whole time.

Thankfully the snake is hibernating somewhere and not in my tree or I'd have really freaked out. This is definitely a tradition I don't care to repeat.

I know it's dumb to use an artificial tree when I have acres of cedars and pines free for the cutting, but until this year, it was so easy to just take the tree out of the box and it's a skinny tree that just fits the spot I have for it.

Hart, that is too funny! Brings the Lampoon Christmas scene to mind with the squirrel in the tree.
My sister put up a fresh tree one time, and you could hear some crackling sounds in the tree. She thought it was a mouse eating the candy canes, turns out it was the pine cones opening up from the heat in the house.
You could just add some glitter to the skins and use it for garland, UGH

Grosssssssssssssssss!

It's like having a fake tree in Florida and storing it in your shed - became a great place for roaches to live - yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes!

Hart, LOL Nothing like Christmas memories to warm the the heart. LOL

Eeeewwww, Bec! That's even worse than snakeskins. :>P

You know, I've always heard it's lucky to have a tree with a bird's nest in it. Wonder if the same applies to snakeskin? Hmmm, probably not. LOL

My best guess on that one - eh, NO! (and definitely not roaches... gawd, I still shudder when I think about it....)

I have a HUGE brandy sniffer glass--maybe 3/4 of a gallon in size. The first thing in it was a complete, shed snake skin (black snake) when I still worked for the grower. 14 Greenhouses.....a stream nearby....lots of woods and all kinds of under-places for snakes to live. Never wanted to come near a live one, though! This was about 18 years ago.

In years since then, I have added all kinds of beautiful dead bugs, butterflies, moths, beetles, etc....etc...to this brandy sniffer. It is completely full!

None of this freaked me out in the least! I have seen cadavers in a medical lab, all cut up--I have seen an autopsy of a body, I have seen all kinds of ills and oozing things on human bodies, amputations, bed sores, you name it. I love anything medical......just another side of me.....
If they would keep me awake and let me--I would want to watch all my own surgeries--and I have had plenty of them--just don't want to feel anything.....

From 1956-1965 I worked for a Pharmaceutical Research lab and EVERY day, I was cutting up mice and guinea pigs. Also worked with rabbits and rats (yew!!!). Loved it all. Did you know a mouse has 4 veins in it's tail? I had to inject stuff in one of them all the time. Did you know a newborn Guinea pig is like a miniature adult? It can eat solid food, can see, and can walk and run--and that they are carniverous and will ear a fellow dead GP? Just what you all wanted to know.......
Did you know that a Rabbit will often kill it's first litter and that a mouse is pregnant only 3 weeks? Now you know why there are so many small rodents.

SO! A snake skin in a Christmas tree would be nothing to me....just NOT the snake itself!

Gita

Hart, Guess you should put some of that Snake-a-way in your Christmas tree box!!!

there's one not before mentioned reason to keep using a fresh cut tree!
Gita- how interesting, How did we never get to that subject on our drives?
I had a few cool bugs in a box for the kids for a couple of years but recently found they had been eaten up by whatever it is they warned us about in Entomology 101, and all that was left was a few piles of powder and the shell of a green Junebug. C'est la vie!

LOL Stormy. Ah, the smell of mothballs brings back such memories of Christmases past. Not.

Gita, everyone in my family except me does something medical and they had such fun when we were all in college regaling me with tales of cadavers and other oogy stuff. It's kind of cute, my sister's kids have the same scenario. One has a degree in English, the other is studying to be a forensic scientist.

Sally, I had a big old rhinosceros beetle in a jar in junior high and was cleaning out my locker one day with a friend helping. I handed her the jar, she took it, she looked in the jar, dropped the jar and screamed bloody murder. LOL

I have a dead Bat in formaldehyde. We found it one morning on the back deck.
Jamie named him Batty Coda. LOL

LOL Weren't you worried about rabies, though?

We found it in the corner and thought maybe it had hit the wall of the house. I did think that Bats unlike birds don't normally do that and may be it was sick or old. But didn't really think of anything like rabies. Ric and Jamie (who was about 10 at the time) thought it was great and put it in a mayonnaise jar of formaldehyde. Jamie took it to school science classes several times and his teachers also thought it was great. I tried "very hard" to talk Jamie into giving it to one of his science teachers but it's still here..... upstairs in one of the bedrooms with some of Jamie's other stuff.

I have a rather high Patio roof with 4 large sky lights in it.
In the winter, I hang my bird feeders under this roof to--(1)--keep it all dry--and (2)--so the squrrels can't get to them.

I also throw a lot of seed on the ground under the Patio so the ground-feeders (Like Doves) can have some.

Well, many times me--or something else--startles the Doves and they fly up towards the light (my sky lights) or towards my big, LR windows and really harm themselves.
Several times I have found dead Doves on my Patio. I know they broke their necks or something.....So sad--as they mate for life......
Also, surprisingly, there is a lot of weight to a Dove as I have found out picking the bodies up!

Now--why can't all the squirrels be that stupid?????

Gita

PS. I KNOW I have a picture somewhere of some of the most beautiful Moths I have collected. Even had someone on DG ID them for me--just don't know what folder they are in.....My never ending task....How do YOU organize your pictures in the Folders so you can find the one you want quickly????????.............Give!!!!!!

Photo org- New thread idea- I'm going to start one in Mid Atlantic

Snakes, spiders, and bugs are all in abundance at my place in the woods, so I've really gotten used to them over the years, whether they are dead or alive - with ONE exception.

The summer before last, I determined that I really needed to clean out the shed. After going through all the stuff on the floor and on the shelves, I drug out a step ladder to tackle the junk in the rafters. I spied an old beach umbrella, old tire tube floats, miscellaneous lumber, etc... I first reached for the old beach umbrella, but the ladder was too close to it and I couldn't manuever it down between the rafters. So, instead of getting down and moving the ladder to a position where I had more leverage, I just turned and started going after some of the old lumber that I could reach. I started hearing a slight hissing, but I didn't really pay any attention - I thought it was air leaking out of the old tire tube floats after being jostled by my attempts at the umbrella. Can you see where this is going???

The hissing got louder and still not paying much attention, I continued on with the lumber. It finally registered that the hissing was now REALLY loud and REALLY close. I turned my head and came face to face with a pissed off snake. It was reared up in defensive striking position. It was level with my face above the rafters, like eye-to-eye, and only about 3 inches away. What a different perspective being confronted with one that up close and personal - UGH!!! My first reaction was to jump, but being on a step ladder just added to the comedy. Of course the step ladder tilted when I jumped and dumped me unceremoniously. I fell from about six feet up and landed flat on my back. I was winded from the fall, but my only thought was trying to think if the snake had actually bitten me or not, and what kind of snake WAS IT??? My relief was great when I saw that it was a harmless, but large (about 6'), black snake. I just laid there on the shed floor until the adrenaline rush was over and the snake went back to his comfy resting place in that old beach umbrella. After I realized that I hadn't been bitten after all, and nothing but a little bruised from the fall, I really saw the humor in it. I must have been oblivious to that snake for more than ten minutes, while it was getting madder, more threatened, and closer to the back of my head each and every one of those minutes!!! Gotta love the country life :-)

Terri, LOL You are lucky, not poisonous but Black snakes can give you a very nasty bite and are prone to becoming infected.

Hah, sorry you had to suffer that for a good story!!!

Terri, you poor thing. I am glad it was just a black snake and it didn't manage to bite you.

Holly, the locals around here have always told me never to touch a dead bat because of rabies. Maybe it's just something around here. Like they have to tell me not to touch a bat anyway. LOL

Why is it every time I think of that snake story I hear the ominous music from JAWS in my mind :-)

Candygram.

HA= SNL!

The real one, not the SNL-like comedy product in more recent years. LOL

Got that right! When it was worth staying up late for

That first cast was so brilliant. Belushi was my favorite. I think the two funniest things I've ever seen in my life were him doing his Joe Cocker twitchy impression with the real Joe Cocker and anything samarai deli.

I'm pretty sure I've written about this before. My own snake story is similar to Terri's. We had four gray finches we kept on our screened pool deck in Orlando. The two pairs had nests, one on either side of the deck in ficus trees. They each had 4 eggs in each nest, but each morning when I checked, there was one fewer egg. Long story short, a rat snake was getting in and eating an egg each night. So when I went out one morning, I couldn't see anything in the one nest. I put my eye right up to the nest hole, and there was the beady eye of the snake, curled in the nest, looking back at me. My DH was on a business trip, so I couldn't yell for him. I ran in the house, got some bug spray, and sprayed it at the snake until it came out of the nest, fell out of the tree, and went out the way it came in, through an unnoticed hole in the screen. Later I felt bad about the bug spray for both the snake and the birds, but those same birds went on to have more, and quite soon we had 16 birds. Fearing that we would be taken over with the exponential increase, the birds were captured and taken to the pet store.

This is a new version to me: "How the Snake Stole Christmas." We still have Grinches in my house.

Ugh, Pam. Poor birds. All that work for nothing.

Snakes...roaches....EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIKBq9TeFlw

Just couldn't help myself! Happy New Year!!!

Thanks Stormyla, I listen to Joe in the car quite often it's one of my favorite CD's. I just love You can keep your hat on. Not only does he have those twitchy movements, in the beginning I wasn't sure he wasn't going to fall over. I noticed that a couple of the band members were keeping an eye on him, too. LOL

Holly, I noticed that too. Youtube also has a great old video of him doing She Came in Through the Bathroom Window. Love that one too.

Alas, apparently Mr. Cocker has found a very good doctor and pharmaceuticals because if you watch his recent videos, his movements all appear normal. Good for him!

Yes, but I also noticed that it was a great performance, got to wonder how those guys did it. It's that rough gravely voice I just love. I have the Commitments CD from the movie. Have you ever seen it. The lead singer has that same type of voice and I just love Johnny Lang. He had that same type of gravely voice, unusual for a young boy, which is what he was when I heard first heard him.

Hey, cool. I never saw that before, just the John Belushi version, that's my era. So di Joe C have something officially wrong, or was it the illegal pharmaceuticals that made him do this?

Stormy, what a treat! My gosh, that takes me back.

Sally, considering that Cocker aged about 30 years in about 3, I would guess it was illegal pharmaceuticals and not legal ones.

For you young whippersnappers who weren't there, Belushi had done these dead on Cocker impressions a couple of times on Saturday Night Live, always falling down at the end as it appeared the real Cocker was always about to do. He was on stage doing Cocker again when on walks Cocker, with both of them twitching and spazzing. It was hilarious.

I tried to find a tape of it but couldn't find one. That and "put, the, candle, BACK" are the two things that have made me laugh more than anything in my life.

Hart, don't forget "Great Knockers"!

Sally, One learns at least 5 things daily. Stormy has been under the misimpression for almost 40 years that Joe had a physical condition that caused the spasms. I can even recall the friend telling me which one it was.

Wikipedia claims that it was Joe playing an imaginary "air guitar". So what explains the feet???? The three years Hart is referring to, may have been the ALLEGED Heroin years.

Holly, I'll have to check out Committments and Johnny Lang. I love Joe's gravely sound too. Same with Tony Bennett and Janis and Bonnie Tyler. We're not too far OT are we????? Maybe Joe encountered a snake in his tree!!!!

Could be worse...could be raining. is what I tell myself at some slightly stressful times

At Least Joe lived past age 27 unlike Janis, Jim, Jimi,...what a year.

Rough voice--I love Robert Palmer, after all, he and I have history.

Look for the sound track from the movie "The Commitments" and rent the movie it is hysterical listening to the Irish slang and swearing. The movie is about a group of young Irish musicians trying to start up a rock band. Ric just happened to find the old CD at a yard sale, that was how we got it. LOL
We have a friend that was born and lived in Ireland until she married an American and came here to live. We had such a good time watching the movie and every so often re-watch it again. Think I'll have to order it from Netflix and watch it again.