This afternoon around 5:30 I returned to Ellijay from exit 1 with Peyton. We had gone down to walk the stores and shop around, didn't buy much at all. We had a lot of fun, however. I left him in Ellijay at his car as he had to return to his apartment in Hayesville. Then I drove home where Linda and I went for our usual evening walk down the road. When we got back I walked down to the garden to pull a few weeds, which are plentiful and after the recent rains, as thick as anything. I squatted down near the sage plants I bought at Sandy Mush Herb Farm (which are doing great) and began to pull the weeds. All at once, just under my hand a very large copperhead shot out and rapidly slithered as fast as any snake I have ever seen move into the clump of Lemon grass I have planted nearby.Scared the bejesus out of me and I ran to the garden house to get a hoe to kill it with. When I came back he was nowhere to be found. Searching in the very thick undergrowth with the business end of the hoe I finally found him. By this time it was almost dark. When he saw me he turned and looked directly into my eyes and struck at the metal end of the hoe. He then went under a portion of the split rail fence and curled up into the strike position again. Luckily that time my hoe found his head at just the right point and the Copperhead is no more. He was, I must say a beautiful thing, malevolent and scary as he was the colors are amazing, all coppery and gold. He was three and a half feet long and as big around as a ping pong ball. Killing snakes is not something I like to do but as much as Linda and I are in the garden the snakes can't live there. There are hundreds of thousands of acres they can inhabit with no interference from me. My garden is not one of those places.
You may wonder where Linda was while I was combating the Copperhead in the bushes down in the garden in the dark. She was as usual directing from the safety of the deck surrounding the house, making helpful comments like, "Shouldn't you have your boots on instead your sandals?" Thanks Linda!
