Oh shhhhhhhhhttt

So, I promised to tell the story of Murphy's great rebellion, but I've had some other things going on and haven't gotten to the blog. However, I'm carving out time for it RIGHT NOW. So here we go.

It's really more fair to call it a great escape than a rebellion. I've had her more than 2.5 years now, and in all that time, she's always been quite content to stick to the confines of my backyard when she goes out for a little "outside time." She's made the occasional foray into the neighbor's yard, but only rarely. The vast majority of the time, she's just chased bugs or acted as sentinal to her territory, in case the neighbor's cat Rosie makes a visit and needs to be schooled.

But a few weeks ago, I noticed her taking an interest in the upper shelf of the potting bench that sits against the back fence. From that perch, you can see the goings on of the ravine and ranch behind my house. This was not good. The ranch is an enormous temptation to a house lion who feels the need to explore the serengeti, and I've already had one cat killed by some sort of mystery predator back there (a snake is my best guess), so if Murph decided to expand her territory to include the ranch, there was gonna be trouble in River City.

Unfortunately, she did just that. Last week, I saw her perched on the shelf, surveying the landscape, then swish! She was gone. Oh. Crap. I ran outside and climbed on the bench. I saw her making her way down the ravine. I ran back inside, put on tennis shoes, then jumped the fence (it would've taken too long to go around) and went after her. She had already disappeared from sight, and I eventually spotted her on the ranch...behind rusty barbed wire. Super.

I climbed over the barbed wire (only discovering later that I'd scratched myself in several places - yay for peroxide and a semi-recent tetanus shot), managed to scoop her up and got her back home, both of us full of burrs. I was not happy. I told J she couldn't be outside unsupervised, if at all, anymore. He agreed.

A couple of days later, he called me, tension in his voice. He had let her out and was watching her, but he looked away for a moment, and when he looked back, she was gone again. After much searching, he finally found her, on the ranch of course. Oh, and by the way, he mentions, he found a baby rattlesnake in the back yard by the trash can. WHAT?? Great. Just great. I had a rattlesnake in the garage once several years ago, but nothing since then. Okay, that's it, I decreed. She doesn't go out anymore AT ALL.

She's not happy about her new confinement, but she'll get used to it. But there's something I may not get used to. I left for work yesterday, and I heard a thumping sound by my right front tire. I pulled over, and I saw something wrapped up in my wheel. What could that...oh, man, are you kidding me? Another snake. I didn't see a rattle on its tail, but it was a young snake, nonetheless. It had apparently crawled up in the wheel to get warm.

It would appear that we're going to have a snake problem on my property this year. Isn't that just fantastico?