a slithering visitor

Yesterday afternoon I drove to Tahlequah and met Dorothy as she was getting off work. We grabbed a bite to eat at our favorite Mexican restaurant then went grocery shopping at Wal-mart. Since she drives faster than I do, she beat me home. I was hoping she would have all the groceries put away by the time I arrived but when I pulled up she was standing behind the screen door motioning toward something on the porch. It was a snake. A big Black snake. That's not my favorite kind. It had crawled up the wall and was curled up behind a plaque we have hanging there about 5 ft off the floor of the porch. I got the shovel and a small hoe, but I was perplexed as to how I was going to get the critter off the porch and into the yard so that I could dispatch him with the shovel. Just then, my neighbor Cliff, a guy who went to school with my daughters, drove up on his riding lawn mower. Since he was raised in these parts I thought he wouldn't mind helping an ex city boy deal with this unwanted intruder. Cliff walked up to the snake, took him by the tail and dragged him out into the yard where I cut his head off with the shovel. That reptile was at least six feet long. I know Black snakes are harmless and will keep the rodent population as close to zero as possible, but they get so big and they'll even get into your house (That's happened before!). I would have taken pictures but I never think of a camera during a crisis of this magnitude. That's the second time in a week where a neighbor has bailed me out of a problem that I was unprepared to handle myself. Thank God for good neighbors. I'll keep them fed with fresh garden vegetables for the rest of the season. Oh, by the way, the lawn mower Cliff rode up on was one of those zero radius models. He let me take it for a spin. That was cool.