snake!

A few years ago we had a snake in the house. A four foot long Black Snake. It crawled in by forcing the trim from the side of a window air conditioner. We have reason to believe he probably spent the night with us before we made the discovery. Dorothy and I had just arrived home from work and were talking, when pictures began to fall off of a curio cabinet across the room from us. We looked over and there was that snake. It looked ten feet long at the time. Dorothy screamed at out the front door she went. My daughter Kelly and her friend Wendy were in her room and when they heard the word "snake" they went out the window and locked themselves in the car. That left me, the man of the house, to extricate this reptile from our home. I couldn't leave the room for fear that the snake would move and curl up under the refrigerator or God forbid in the springs of my recliner. My .22 rifle was behind the door, so I grabbed that and took aim. I held my breath and waited for what seemed an eternity for the snake's head to stay still for just a second then squeezed the trigger. It fell to the floor dead. I used a shovel to lift it into a box and took it outside. After that incident we have made sure our house is snake proof, yet we always worry. If it ever happens again, Dorothy will find a new place to live.