(Garter snake, also known as a grass snake. Harmless and very pretty.)
Today's kind of a slow day. We went to church, and were late. We made it, just a little late is all. But we weren't the last people to walk in at least! I hate to be late anywhere, but especially to church.
Otter and I ran a couple of errands. She needed a new swim suit this year, so we went to Target. We didn't find anything there but I don't know why we actually thought that we would since we haven't found anything there in months. Except dog food, which was on sale so we got it there instead of at Wally. So we headed up the street to the mall and she found a cute suit at Sears. Which was also on sale, so that was an unexpected bonus.
We did have a Wally trip in there, but it was just to get Tide and a couple of things that I needed. I am not a Walmart fan, but I do have to shop there at times. It's just cheaper, but sometimes you get what you pay for. But I needed Ridex (septic treatment) and it's cheaper enough at Wally (along with the Tide) that it was worth it to put up with Wally's usual ridiculousness.
Otter's down to 2 days left, then she's no longer a college freshman. Her sophmore year won't start until mid-August, but as I've already mentioned she decided to take her math courses in the summer term so that she won't have a huge course load and can concentrate on math. Math is not her strong suit! She's obviously her mother's daughter...
It's been cool the last couple of days, after a few warm days. It was trying to rain earlier, the rain followed us home from the mall but it meandered off somewhere else and didn't quite get this far. It wasn't a hard rain anyway. We've had the house open with the fan in the window, we decided the fact that the house was humid and stuffy was worse than the potential allergy issues that may be caused by the house being open. But when you break into a sweat just walking in the door, it's time to open up!
When we were leaving Sears, we decided to take the elevator down instead of the escalator. My stupidleftknee was starting to hurt and the elevator was closer. It was also dirty, I don't think that the cleaning crew had been in it for days. It smelled really bad and there was trash all over it. Otter commented about how bad it was and I reminded her about my family history with elevators at Sears. But it turned out that she didn't know the story.
(Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake - the kind we were always on the watch for. Gorgeous!)
Froggy, you might remember this although you weren't with us at the time. When I was about 15 or so, Mom and I went to Sears. There had been a few incidents involving people getting bitten by snakes at stores, one of them was a place similar to Lowe's and was probably just coincidence that a snake happened to be there, but there was another place which might have been Dillard's where someone was bitten by a rattlesnake and he was hurt badly. He sued the store, but then it turned out that he actually brought the snake in and let it bite him with the intention of suing. He wasn't very smart! So, this day in Sears, Mom and I got in the elevator (which was dirty then too) and noticed a small paper bag sitting on the ash tray that was attached to the wall - remember how everyone used to smoke and it wasn't an issue for anybody? Mom was thinking that someone must have bought something and then left it behind, so she looked in the bag to see if it was actually trash or maybe something that she needed to turn in as lost.
Mom was part Cherokee, she had naturaly "tan" skin - but she turned as white as a sheet in an instant. I'm not sure what I thought was wrong with her, but she did not look very good. In a voice I could just barely hear, she told me to hurry and go get someone who worked at the store and she was going to stay to keep anyone else from getting on the elevator - because there was a snake in the bag. I did as she told me to, but it took me a few minutes to convince the first clerk that I found that I was really telling the truth and that there really was a snake in a bag in the elevator! Well, I can understand why they thought I was joking. So, we go back to the elevator and Mom is still standing in the doorway so nobody else can get in and the bag is back on the ashtray. And that's when I saw the second snake - the one that had been behind us in the elevator the entire time. Since we could see the second one easily, it was obvious that it was just a grass snake but the one in the bag wasn't visible enough to see that it was also a harmless grass (garter) snake. Mom was never afraid of snakes or just about any other animal although she wasn't a fan of alligators (another mom encounter story for another time).
As I recall, it was a very looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time before she would get back in that particular elevator.
2 comments:
i remember hearing the story. She was afraid of scorpions. I think she had been stung by one once.
There was also a story about one time you and her went to the grocery store and when you came out there was someone sitting in her car. She took you and went back in and called the cops (no cell phones then). When she came back out, they were gone. Do you remember this story? Froggy
At first, I didn't think so. But now that I have had time to think, it's possible that I remember it. I think I was really young but I do have a vague impression of something involving the car and someone in it.
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