My life with the 3stephensboys is exciting, trying, fulfilling, entertaining, amazing, tiring, inspiring... what God made me for & what I love. Therefore, you may not see many pictures of Darrin or me, but you will get an eye full of my 3stephensboys in all of their glory, amazement and cuteness! Thanks for visiting! Enjoy!

Monday, March 24, 2008

The Rest of Our Easter Story

So now.... here's the rest of the story....

We had had a wonderful day and the weather was still nice. The boys were in the backyard playing when we noticed Shadow, the cat, playing with something in grass. Darrin all of a sudden freaked out when he realized it was a snake!!!

The coloring of the snake made Darrin think it was a Coral Snake, which is very venomous, but Darrin knew that the Milk Snake has very similar striping. He hollered at me to check the internet for the differences between them. He was attempting to keep the cat, dog and children away from the snake until we knew for sure what kind it was.


We eventually realized it was a Milk Snake.

Red touch yellow, kill a fellow
Red touch black, venom lack


So we were OK!!!

Darrin was considering keeping the thing for a pet for Kye, but I had other ideas. We obviously didn't want to harm the thing, so we called our snake friend, Fernando!!!


Darrin caught him on Kru's toy rake, while we waited to Fernando and his family to come over.




Last time we found a snake, Fernando was very disappointed that we didn't call him, so I was not going to make that mistake again!!!

He was very excited and said it was very rare to find one of these in the wild. We ended up putting the snake it a sand pail with a basketball on top of it! Wouldn't want it to escape!! For Sure!!!



When the Aquirres arrived, excitement was thick!
Of course the snake came out and everyone, well almost everyone touched him!

Thinking ahead, Fernando had brought his snake identifying book along! YEAH!!

We established that we had a Louisiana Milk Snake. Again, being very rare, Fernando , our snake expert, recommended that we release the snake back into nature so that we could have more snakes for people to enjoy, of course you would have to be one of those people who like to enjoy snakes!!!


So after everyone, who wanted a turn, had a turn petting the snake. We all packed up to go out to Lick Creek Park to release the snake.

We had never been out there! Yeah! A new place to go!




Fernando, having had snakes for pets and handling them often, was great with the snake and the kids!











I think Kye would enjoy having a pet for a snake, but after hearing how and what you have to do in order to feed the snake, we aren't up for that yet and my children aren't old enough yet to be that responsible. Mom is NOT going to be dethawing mice on the kitchen counter to feed to a snake!

Sorry boys!!! I hope that you will survive this mean mother who doesn't want a snake in her house right now! :)






So with expertise precision, we put the snake into a sock for his journey to the park.














When we arrived at the park, Fernando in his Fernando-way, made sure everyone understood what we were doing and why. We even had a little lesson in cold-blooded vs warm blooded!!

Thanks Fernando!!!









Here comes the snake!!!!!




















Fernando had never seen one of these in the wild and asked to have a photo with the snake!!!!!

What a snake charmer!













Dakota was chosen to release the snake! But of course, Kye, Mia and Isabella wanted to too!










And there he or she went!













Good bye, Louisiana Milk Snake!


Kye missed it almost immediately!

Kru wanted to know where the swings were!?!






It was late and to end a wonderful Easter, we all went to Double Daves for some yummy pizza!

We hadn't planned on this ending to our Easter, but it was so nice to end the day with friends!!

1 comment:

Kathryn, Michael and Alex said...

I am all for the park and ending the day with friends...snakes...ugh!!!!!

I am fairly calm when the boys find them at the park or somewhere else, my backyard on the other hand is a little too close to home!!!

I am glad you had fun.