What do you do when you see a snake? I used to squirm and stay as far away as possible.

Then I met The Snake Man. He’s famous for catching and killing cobras and vipers. People all over our town know that when you find a snake, you call this man. He just happens to be my husband.

He taught me to appreciate and respect these slithery creatures. By the way, snakes are not slimy. Far from it.

So now, we catch snakes together. I think the quintessential moment came a few years ago when we were driving down our street late at night. The Snake Man saw a snake slither across the road. He stopped the car and jumped out. Without thinking, I jumped out of the car, too, and ran to open our gate. I grabbed our machete and a big stick. Then we rounded up the snake together. We took it home and put it in a box, until we were able to identify it with our Snake Book. It wasn’t poisonous, so Sean took it down to the field and let it go.

After that, we did our snake hunting as a team. Even our dogs joined in, alerting us to the presence of snakes with “The Snake Bark”. We caught a baby snake the other day. It looked like a Black and White Krait at first, but we figured out from the tail that it was just a copy cat Rat Snake.