How rubber boots saved my life

Okay, maybe the title of this post is a bit of an exaggeration. The thing is, I was seriously considering wearing shorts and tennis shoes to the dairy this morning because it's been SO hot but decided to wear my pants and boots instead because I knew I would be washing the barn out. Anyway, after we were done milking I was scraping all the cow poop down the alley way (where the cows walk out of the dairy barn) when suddenly something hit the back of my ankle. I turned around to see what it was and it was a huge (in my opinion) snake that had struck at my leg! Give me spiders, scorpions, whatever, but I can not stand snakes. I am terrified of them. I screamed really loud, jumped, and then waddled (I would have ran but at 9 months pregnant that's a little hard to do) out of there as fast as I could!  I walked back into the dairy barn and out through another door to see if it was still out there and it was. I went and got my dad and he chopped it's creepy little head off.

This is where it happened. See that patch of grass hanging over the curb about halfway down, that's where the nasty little beast was hiding.

If I would have been wearing shorts and that snake would have touched my bare leg I probably would have fainted and knocked myself out on the concrete or maybe even had a heart attack! So these are the boots that saved my life ;) Gorgeous aren't they!

And this is it, my beheaded enemy. Sorry to all you animal lovers but we just don't do snakes around here!

On a lighter note, here are some other creatures of nature I saw today.

A Killdeer on the gravel road to our new house. See her four eggs to left of her. These are pretty cool birds. She's doing her "get the hell away from my babies" dance and chirp. Check out this link which tells about them http://www.birdwatching.com/stories/killdeer.html. 

This is a wild turkey that I see all the time in our neighbors field on the way to my parents house. I'm not sure why she hangs out by herself. We have a couple of pretty big flocks that hang around the dairy.

Just before I saw the turkey, a huge, harry tarantula crawled across the road but I didn't want to get out of my car and take a picture of it. Gotta love nature!