Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Snake Feast

I cannot believe it. I just cannot believe it. My family ate a snake.



Even my husband's friend Tim, who was over to help my husband start screening in the porch, had some.



I've always taught the kids not to kill anything they weren't going to eat. But I never intended that rule to apply to snakes. It is just unthinkable.

Yesterday, Gabrielle brought the skinned and trimmed snake to the house. When I told her to "get that thing out of here" she told me it was not a thing, it was meat. It ended up soaking in a bowl of ice water on the counter while I prepared dinner, all the while pretending it wasn't there.

Today, I was forced to help Gabrielle cut up the snake. (The bones hurt her fingers.) She breaded and fried some of it, some she coated with vinaigrette and some got spicy herbs and pineapple juice. All were cooked outside on a fire the kids built.



Throughout their snake feast, I hid in the house (except for taking the pictures for this post). I admit it. I am a wimp. I would not even try the snake. Not for anything.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Another One!

I do not know what is going on in the snake world this year, but we found ANOTHER ONE in our hen house today. This time Gregory found it in a nest when he went to gather eggs.



It is another "turtle back" snake. (Gregory says the pattern on it's back looks like a turtle.) Mr. Snake had already helped himself to breakfast when we shot him.



We killed this one with Gregory's BB gun like the last one. This time we shot it in the head right away. Gregory wanted to do it, but I knew the snake was going to try to jump out of the nest (and at the shooter) on the first shot so I took the first 2 shots. He jumped out of the nest right away and I let Gregory finish him off. He was tough and tried to strike/bite us before dying. I was proud of my shooting. The egg the snake had not eaten remained undamaged in the nest after we killed the snake.

Gregory is out skinning the snake. After he got over his initial panic, Gregory got very excited about getting another snake skin. He asked me if he could eat the snake this time. (He read snake was good eating while he searched the Internet for advice about preserving snake skin.) I've always taught my children they were not to kill anything unless they were going to eat it. I hadn't thought about snakes. So I told him he could eat it if he wanted to eat it. (Gabrielle wants some too.) I think I'll let them build a fire outside to cook it on. I really don't want them to see my face when they try to eat the thing. I like that my kids are open minded about such things.

Gregory asked me if I wanted the egg back. Uh, no.

On a better subject, we received and planted our sassafras trees today.



Hopefully they will come out of dormancy okay and grow big and tall, providing us with lots of root-beer, tea and file'.

I've been planting our garden these last few weeks and realized I don't have enough space for everything I want to try to plant this year. So, I decided we really didn't need a back yard.



We really enjoy eating out of the garden more than we like spending time outside in the heat of summer anyway. Well, the kids like the pool. We just need to get Kurt to find and fix the leak.