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We’re about to walk up the back steps to the house when Cole grabs me forcefully by the arm. Duke and I stop.
“Are those snakes by your door?” he whispers animatedly.
The breath in my lungs stalls. “What? Where?” I start scanning the ground around us. I’m not wearing boots. I’m wearing plain old tennis shoes, so if it were to strike, it would get me in the leg.
“Right there.” He points toward the door, and my eyes follow.
Sure enough, I see two large brown snakes. One is lying on the doormat, and the other is half hidden behind the grill.
Oh. My. God.
While not many people know this about me, as I don’t find it a habit to pass around my fears, I just don’t do snakes. At. All. My heart rate takes off, my hands start tingling, and at this moment, I want to burn the whole house down.
“What kind do you think they are?” I ask him, swallowing roughly.
“If I had to guess, I’d say cottonmouth. They’re dark and have those black strike markings. Briggs, these are poisonous. We can’t go near them,” he says, taking another step back.
I move back with him and pull on Duke’s collar to keep him from wandering up the steps and meeting his fate.
I think I’m going to throw up.
“Well, we certainly can’t leave them on the porch. I don’t need them lingering around as we get ready to open for the season,” I tell him as I panic internally.
A shiver runs through me, just thinking about them lingering outside my doors. Every time I open one now, I’m going to have anxiety and need to check it first.
“Stay here. I’ll be right back,” he says, running off and around to the front of the house.
Looking around, I’m suddenly distressed that more are just waiting to jump out at me. Do they have babies somewhere? Or eggs and they’re just waiting to hatch. It’s like that weird sensation when you’re watching a movie and someone has spiders crawling on them. You can feel them crawling on you too.
This isn’t the first time we’ve encountered snakes on the property, but Cole knows how I feel about them, and he’s the one who always takes care of it. Usually with a big shovel in hand, he twists so it’s edge down, and he strikes like it’s a sword, cutting their heads right off. However, this time, he’s running back toward me with my shotgun in hand.
“You’re going to shoot them?” I almost yell but pull back at the last second so as not to startle the snakes. My eyes dart back and forth between him and them. What if they start to slither away?
Oh. My. God.
I just can’t.
“Well, I’m definitely not going to go near them. You have any other suggestions?”
Fuck no.
I step back a few more paces as he widens his stance and raises the gun. It looks like this gun is finally going to get used after all. Cole’s elbow is almost ninety degrees to the ground, the butt is secured tightly against his shoulder, he aims, and without hesitating, he fires.
The crack of the weapon lets off a bang so loud that my ears ring for a minute as the sound echoes across the mountain.
The music stops.
Both of us stare at the snake on the doorstep. He aimed perfectly and shot the damn thing in two pieces. I’m certain the bullet is lodged somewhere in the doormat, too. But there’s no blood, gore, or last-minute twitches, and the other snake behind the grill didn’t move at all.
What the hell?
Both of us slowly move to the steps to take a closer look.
“Is that a . . .” Cole mumbles before closing the distance and picking up a piece of the snake. It flops over in his hand, and I watch him squeeze it. Nothing happens, and nothing comes out of it.
“It’s rubber.” He looks at me, one hundred percent confused.
Rubber?
