The dogs woke me up at 12:30 this morning, not with an all-out "intruder alert!" bark, but more of a "we found something we've never seen before and it's probably not dangerous but we thought we should wake you up in the middle of the night and let you know about it anyway" bark.  A peek out the window revealed that they had something on the ground, but they weren't excited enough for it to be a snake.  It was a little cool for night-time snakes anyway.

I went outside to check, and in the bluish lambency of the security light, could see nothing special.  It was probably just some large flightless bug, lost in the shadows of the miniature sand dunes of the driveway.  I sifted the sand a couple of times with a rake, anyway, just to show them I was paying attention.  They were content with that, and went back to sleep.


But it reminded me that it's getting to be that time of year when I might ought to keep one of the .22s on standby loaded up with my favorite shotshells.  Because who wants to work up a sweat whacking a snake* with rake at 12:30 in the morning when you can just whack him with some #12 shot and go back to sleep?

*My generic use of "snake" refers specifically to the copperhead.  If it's any other snake I'll specify.  And if it's non-venomous, I'll try to shoo the dogs off and let it be.  I'm especially partial to king snakes and bull snakes.