My Sword's First Blood!!!

My wounding and hurts from the gall-bladder surgery have lain me up for the last couple weeks and I am supposed to take it easy and not pick up things heavier than a gallon of milk. This has really irritated my 19 month old daughter Maddie, she gets mad! Serious Daddy's girl.

But in being laid up I have neglected the usual work around the house, the grass in the back yard is getting pretty long and the neighbors tree roots have sprung up and are already almost 18 inches tall or so. My wife has been meaning to mow the lawn for me and keeps getting distracted with this or that. Today she said she would just go do it.

She was gone maybe five minutes max-I was finishing edits-and she comes running into the office screaming. A snake.
What kind? I says's.
Don't know, I just saw scales and brown!
Where?
Next to the gate, it was big.

I changed out of my pajama's, I am a writer don't ya know, that's what writers wear at home. Tried to find my tall steel-toed Harley boots, they oughta impede a snakes fangs if I need them too. But the right-foot boot has disappeared, my middle child Baur as we nickname him (his full name is Baurak-Ale David West but this post is not about my penchant for odd names) really likes to wear Daddy's boots because they are so cool. Well he lost one so I had to find a second pair of biker boots. I am not a biker, I just like the boots.

Now I could have taken my pellet gun out of the closet-not gonna take out the real guns, I live in a nice neighborhood. But being the Barbarian at the Gates that I am took out my big battle ready sword-the Grosse Messer by Cold Steel. I have mentioned in an earlier post that this is the sword I use as a basis for a main character in 'Heroes of the Fallen'.

So I go out to the side-yard where my wife says the snake is. I can actually smell it. I approach cautiously, the grass is deep and the light breeze causes the everything in sight to ripple and writhe. My wife watches from the window, almost in tears-she is very afraid of snakes-but I come on, blade at the ready.

I see a brown and blue-striped tail in the grass beside the gate. Well its not a rattler, because if it was I would not have slain it-no sirree- they are a protected endangered species here in Utah, illegal to kill them. So it was not a rattler! Just so that is clear.

Knowing how worried my wife was -hyperventilating- I separated the last third of
the snake from itself with a graceful flick of my razor-sharp sword. It was about as thick as my thumb, to give you a dimension. It did nothing, no writhing, nothing at all like the innumerable chickens or fish that have met their fate at my dark and bloody hands.

I prodded the snake with the sword tip and picked it up. It had probably been dead for the last few days and we just never saw it in the grass. I actually suspect that I may have unknowingly killed it a few days ago when I went to get the mail and slammed the gate shut. The snakes body appeared to have been wedged and trapped, it may very likely have been stuck and died from the heatwave of the week.

In any case, my sword still cleaved it like a very big knife through a Gadianton's thumb, or probably even easier than that. Here is a pic of my sword again..
And if you like stories about snakes, I have another about a snake biting me in the Sacred Grove.