Woman v. Wild

I believe there's a show called "Man v. Wild" on the Discovery Channel. I've never actually seen it, but I've heard about it. From what I've gathered it's a British guy, from Special Ops type guy, that gets dropped in the middle of some treacherous expanse of land or water and has to somehow survive.

He's got nothing on me. The other day I was walking around my yard with my Mom asking her questions about some plants when I suddenly became alarmed and said, "Oh my!" and in her typical cool, calm and collected way my Mom yelled, "WHAT?! WHAT?!" As calmly as possible, I said, "There's a snake." She replied, "WHERE?! WHERE?! There it was casually soaking in the sun. I ran and got Brennan who about 5 minutes later came out with gloves, a shovel and a garbage can. Just as he walked out the door, the snake slithered back into the bushes. I tried to stop him with my shovel, but missed. Brennan poked around for awhile, but couldn't find him.

I've been trying to tell myself that it's no big deal and that they're actually good. They eat snails. I hate snails. I looked up photos of all the snakes that live in Utah online and I'm pretty sure it's a Wandering Garter snake. I also read that they can have a litter of up to 20. I can maybe handle one snake in my flower bed just as I'm getting ready to plant things (yes I'm aware it's like 2 months too late for that), but 20 baby snakes is just a little too much for me. I'm praying that our snake is a single male with no females anywhere near.

In the meantime, while Brennan is out of town, I was out all morning sawing off out of control Forsythia bush limbs about 2 feet from the snake sighting. I would step into the dense foilage and saw like my life depended on it. (In case you don't know, this type of snake is "harmless", but that's little comfort). I'm not asking for my own tv show or anything, but I am impressed with myself.