An unexpected visitor

When Linnea, Jenny and I came home from school yesterday afternoon, we found a visitor waiting. The girls shrieked and jumped back, but all three of us were entranced by our beautiful guest. It was snake, elegant and slim, maybe 18 or 20 inches long. Her greeting was to curl her tail into a tight fire engine red spiral and shake it at us. Then she quite purposefully slithered toward the door, obviously hoping to go inside. Her back was shiny and brown, but her belly was the most stunning red. She had a handsome red ring on her neck, too. When she found the door closed, and a threshold stopping her from going under it, she settled in comfortably, right up against it, aligning herself with the bottoms of both doors, holding them closed to the rest of us.

The girls decided to go in the back door, but I thought I'd work in the garden a while, checking the door every so often to see if she was still there. When I looked about half an hour later, she was gone, so I went inside. A quick search on the internet revealed that my guest was a Monterey ringneck snake.



Imagine my surprise when I returned from dropping Linnea off at work an hour later and opened the door to find the snake indoors, lying on the doormat. The dog and cat were there too, staring at her with much the same look on their faces that we humans had. I knew from Mother Internet that ringnecks play dead when they are afraid, so I had no qualms about picking up the doormat with her on it and taking her out to the stone wall in front of the house.

I don't know why she was out in the day, or so brave. Or how she got into the house, over the threshold. She must have been very determined to get in!

When I plopped her limp body down on the stones, she lay still moment, then lifted her head and looked directly at me before slithering away between the rocks.

Am I lucky or what???