I hate snakes. In fact, I have never hated any creature on the face of the earth more than I hate snakes. It’s nothing personal. I’m sure they are perfectly wonderful animals in the grand scheme of things, but they’re creepy and for some reason, every time I can’t stop myself from jumping up and down, screaming and running in the other direction.

Given my life-long fear of snakes, I like to pretend that there are none in my immediate vicinity. Unfortunately, I live in the middle of nowhere and when you’re surrounded by nothing but woods, swamps, ponds and corn fields, snakes are going to make an occasional appearance, and I am occasionally going to scream and cry until my husband comes to the rescue and shoos the little creature off my yard.

We had one of these encounters over the last weekend. After making my husband a nice Father’s Day breakfast (my way of saying thanks for saving me from all those harmless snakes) we took our two-year-old son outside and started chasing him around the house and trying to keep him out of the areas where he knows he’s not supposed to be.