We Interrupt This Performance of Hamilton to Bring You....

You'll be back, soon you'll see

You'll remember you belong to me

You'll be back, time will tell

You'll remember that I served you well

Oceans rise, empires fall

We have seen each other through it all

And when push comes to shove

I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!

It was in the middle of this passionate performance of You'll Be Back that this happened. We had performed all of Hamilton in and out of the pool prior to this. Katura took the lead on The Schuyler Sisters, complete with the perfectly timed armed movements... you Hamilton fans know what I'm talking about. The pool was our stage and we were owning it!

And then it happened.

Swimming together in the deep end while I was doing my best King George III when I was interrupted. 

"Mommy, I think I see something?!?" She was confident, but also confused. What she THOUGHT she saw couldn't really be what she thought it was, right? I floated myself around to face the same way she was, and looked up the hill. I was expecting to see one of our many deer, or the one the two turkeys that have moved in. The hillside was bare. She pointed down at the pool. 

Oh, she must have found our pineapple thermometer! It has a tendency to float into the side area where the pump stuff is. Typically I swim over and pull it out and we continue with our pool business. Not this time.

What the heck is that? Its NOT a pineapple. It has stripes. It is round. Is it a rope? I've never seen a rope like that around here. Why would there be a rope in our pool? I clean that thing almost every day and I know there wasn't anything like that around. It was like a slow-motion triple take. One where you feel like you have to rub your eyes to really see clear. There was definitely something coiled in a circle. And in the middle of that coil.... a head. A SNAKE head!

EVERYBODY OUT OF THE POOL!!!

We girls forgot Hamilton was even happening and we were out of the water so fast! 

Okay, deep breathes. Surely we were both wrong. She did think it was a snake, but let's just double check before waking up daddy!

She stood on the edge and watched as I hopped back in and delicately swam over. What, was I think I would sneak up on it in the water?? Like a snake wouldn't know?! Sheesh. I got pretty close, saw the exact same thing, but this time its head seemed even higher up and IT WAS LOOKING AT ME!!

Back to the shallow end and up those steps I went! 

Katura knew what she had to do! "Mommy, you wait here, I'll go get daddy!!"

It didn't take long at all and we were all at the pool staring. Shawn found a long rod to use to open the lid. Sure our hands can easily lift that lid - which is what Katura wanted me to do originally (Hell no!!) - but would YOU want to bend down and lift up a lid with an anaconda floating right below you? What would it do?? Was it going to hiss and jump up and eat us??

Shawn delicately raised the lid and stood there confused. He looked at us standing on the opposite side of the pool. "There's no snake here." "What?? There has to be! I know what I saw! It's a snake! I saw it's head!" I rushed over to his side and looked down. NO snake. Katura and I both saw it. We didn't make it up. WHERE DID THIS THING GO???

And then we heard the shrieks of our little girl. "IT'S SWIMMING! IT'S SWIMMING!"

Sure enough that snake was swimming in the middle of our pool. Damn, it was FAST! And HUGE!! Over 2 feet long for sure. I couldn't even get the entire thing in one shot except for when it was all coiled up getting scooped on the pool net. Shawn worked on the scooping, Katura stood back watching and I was there with the camera. This HAD to be documented!

The snake was set over the side wall in the grass. It flopped around quite a bit and then slithered off into the sunset. Shawn was up there pretty fast to try to relocate it to the other side of our road, but it was already gone.

Will it be back?

I don't know.

But we have our rod handy and you can guarantee we will be checking that area FIRST every day as part of my standard pool cleaning!!

Meet our new pet, Hamilton!

*No humans or California Kingsnakes were harmed in the making of this blog.