And then I screamed like a girl

Ok, I didn't really. Here's what happend (note: Ophidiophobes might want to stop reading right here):

I love snakes (and spiders). I think they're beautiful and interesting, beneficial and, as Ford Prefect would say: "mostly harmless", but most of all I fucking hate rats. I dispise rats (by rats I mean mostly mice. I've not had much call to battle actual rats.) They chew on your walls in the night, piss and shit wherever they go, and leave that horrible gag-inducing mouse smell.

Sweet Mother of Stan Lee, I loathe those little nasty fuckers.

Now I don't propose that I sally forth into the world and eradicate all mice (unlike, say, fire ants. If every fire ant on the planet were to drop down dead right this second I'd buy fireworks and beer and have a party for everybody.) If mice'd stay where they're supposed to: outfuckingside, then we'd be cool. I get no pleasure from killing them. Really. But they come in my house and Blue's Homeland Security is fucked off about it.

So I guess you've deduced that we get mice in the house every now and then.

But I digress ...

So yesterday, after a truly bad day, I'm speaking tersely with Evil Genius Husband in the kitchen and I look up, over his shoulder, and freeze. I managed a little "Oh!" of surprise.

EGH who, bless him, has become (almost) inured to some of the weird stuff that seems to happen around me, became quite still: "What?"

"Well, don't be startled, but look above the window in the dining room"

And there was this guy:

(sorry for the crap photo, he wasn't very big - maybe 3 1/2 feet - and he got on the move the instant he realized we were watching.)

I wish we'd had a third party to takes pics during the subsequent snake dance wherin, armed with a shepherd's crook and a bag, we nabbed our Slytherin mascot by the tail (ohh, he got so mad and made very impressive snake faces at us) and escorted him outside to the herb garden.

*note* Yes my kitchen is this hideous shade of yellow, but not by my own hand. The tasteless, city-bred female who lived in the house prior to us not only chose this vomitous colour but painted over 100 year old hand-sawed wooden beams and dripped yellow paint onto the 50 year old oak hardwood floor.