P.T.S.D

Around our house, this has taken on another meaning, Post Traumatic Snake Disorder.

I have always hated snakes, always.  I grew up adjacent to a rock quarry where I was lectured regularly about the frequency of snakes.  I remember not being able to leave swim lessons once at the local pool because there were Copperheads right outside the gate they had to move.  I have many vivid memories of childhood that involved near death experiences with poisonous snakes, but to be honest, I have no idea how many of or if any of them actually happened or were just created in my overactive imagination.  I DO remember a specific incident in college where my boyfriend had to carry me out of a state park piggyback because I was hyperventilating and possibly hallucinating after having two separate snake sightings in less than an hour during a hike.

After last Mondays run in with a baby Pacific Rattlesnake, I have not been doing so great.  So many things are haunting me over the event.  Why didn't I realize sooner what that sound was?  It wouldn't have prevented Tater from getting bit, but I do have these recurring daydreams of watching Lucy try her damnedest to get at that snake.  She was mere millimeters from having her own hospital stay, and as the snake was in a defensive position, her bite would have been much worse than Tater's.  I have pangs of serious guilt realizing how much in denial I was that Tater had been bitten, first trying to argue to Timothy that it was probably just a bee sting and then trying to justify to the vet that it was probably just a dry bite.  Part of that was lack of information and experience with how doge react to rattlesnake bites, but part was my fear of accepting my worst nightmare (or very near, a child would have been worse) had come true and that I could very well lose a beloved pet in all this.

Tater is doing great!!  He spent only one night in the hospital and needed only 1 vial of antivenin and no plasma.  He responded very well, we were very lucky.  Our total vet bill ended up being only just over half of what their original estimate was, thankfully. A week later, Mr. Tot is a little slow, the only visible sign left of his attack is a small wound on his chin that is healing.  It will leave a nice scar though for sharing with all the ladies he wants to impress.  Tim and I both think his tongue is hanging out more than it used to.  But other than that, he is good.

"See that, young pup, THAT is where that 10ft Rattlesnake got me after hours of battle."

Me, on the other had....not so good.  I tried everyday last week to finish the outdoor work I had started right before he got bit.  I have a chicken coop that needs the bedding changed and mounds of nanny berries to compost.  The compost needs to be watered and turned, and all of these activities take place within inches to feet of where that blasted snake was.  I see snakes everywhere, fictional ones.  I hear snakes what seems like every 10 minutes.  These, I am distressed to realize, are real and I have probably heard them hundreds of times this past year and not known what i was listening too.
They sound nothing like any of the many recorded rattles I have heard, to me they sound exactly like a locust or a beetle, noises that were a constant presence in the Midwest where I grew up.  Nothing alarming about a fricking beetle.    I have to admit to calling Dr. Farm Hand twice last week in a panic, which honestly, I don't think I have done since our kids were 1 and 2 and I had locked myself in the bathroom in pre-nervous breakdown state.  Once I was doing yard work in the front of the house where it is more open, yet every time a car drove by, the vibrations set off a rattlesnake across the street in our neighbors corral somewhere.  I heard that thing about 8 times before I called it quits and came in to curl in a ball on the couch.

I know I will heal by putting one foot in front of the other.  Seeing my fatty black lounging around and getting back to his old self will help, and so will time.  In the meantime, we have all better educated ourselves and have had a drastic reminder to always be on the look out.  We have also bit into a new, rather large endeavor, months before we otherwise would have.  The bank of ice plant and shrubbery that the Fire Captain pointedly called a 'rattlers paradise'?  Gone.  Hired some local guys to come in and clear the whole thing.  Fixing this is going to be a large landscaping project, only a month after we finished our last one.  But??  There is NOWHERE for those snakes to hide now, at least not around the house.  We'll see if that actually makes me rest easy.