Good news. And bad news.

The good news:  This herd of deer.....

Almost every evening that I'm at Coppercreek, I see this herd of deer.  Its usually right about dark so I haven't been able to get a great shot of them.  But today I saw them early.  They had been up close to the house earlier but I scared them when I starting taking pictures.

 I counted 11 tonight but a week or so ago, I counted 13.  Brad is going to love living here!

The bad news:  This SNAKE!

Um.....YES, its in the house!!!  

Brad and I had been working at the house all day until he had to go to work at 5:00.  I dropped him off and went back to the house to do a little more work.  We have a big tool box full of things we need when we work out there.  We just left it in what will be Brad's gun room so as soon as I got back to the house, I unlocked the box and then realized that Brad had left the door open on the other side of the safe room.  The drain is not working in that area so water is standing and its really dark in there.  Paul has a series of boards he puts behind the door so that no one can open it and I was picking all of those up and trying to put them like he had them.  As I was walking back to the other side, I noticed a stick in the room and I thought it was odd because its all the way at the back of the basement and I wondered how would it have gotten there.  Of course, it wasn't a stick, it was this stupid copperhead!  I freaked out!  Why couldn't I have found it 2 hours earlier when Brad was there?????  I didn't know what to do, we had a gun in the truck, but he was right up next to a wall, right inside the doorway so there was no way I would have actually hit him.   Brad told me to find something to beat it with but its so dark and wet and closed in back there I couldn't do that either.  So I took some pictures of him and just sat outside hoping he would come out.  He didn't.  Its times like this I really wish I knew someone in Mountain Home.  I really wanted to ask Brad if he would call his friend Billy but I decided that was ridiculous since this probably wasn't a full-blown emergency.  I did get a good laugh out of the whole situation though.  I sent a picture of it to Tara and her reaction cracked me up!  I wish I could post it on here, but it wasn't PG.

I grew up in the country and I remember having snakes around, what seemed like, all the time.  But I don't remember being so scared of them then.    I just freak out now.  

Brad got off work at midnight and we went back out there to see if he was still there but he wasn't.  I had already called Paul to warn him so I guess we're safe for now.