So, although I am home, the fun and chaos has yet to cease. My mom offered to pay my sister's boyfriend and I $10 an hour to do some heavy labor in our house at Hickory. So of course we said we were game.
We drive up there early yesterday morning and are not surprised to find the place ridden with bugs, heat and obscene amounts of moisture. Mom starts us with some simple weeds and mulching. After a few hours we break for lunch. Nothing too eventful except the fact that my nose started gushing blood twice due to my horrible allergies. It kinda looks like someone or something was murdered on our driveway....
After lunch mom tells us its time for the biggest part. The people who owned the house before we bought it (it had been vacant for 4 years) had foolishly planted a TON of ivy. For those of you who don't know, ivy grows and spreads like wildfire. It's roots are big and everywhere and its a pain to get up. Especially when its grown around a bunch of rose bushes and other things that can't be touched. So we start and as soon as we get up the top bit of ivy in one spot, it turns out there are three more layers of roots underneath. About 30 minutes into this, something jumps out of the bundle of roots presently in my hand. A snake is on the ground slithering away from me. We jump back and freak out at this point, because we both saw a rattler and knew that the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake was indigenous to North Carolina. Snakey slithers into a hole, but we can still see him. At this point my nose starts gushing blood again. Now, I am all for not killing snakes or any animal that isn't a threat, but we have three cats and two dogs and were not going to take the chance of it biting one of them, or us working in the yard. We try flushing him out with water, and it did nothing. So we reluctantly get the gasoline out and sprinkle a bit into the hole. Gas irritates their skin, so snakey instantly started to slither himself out of the hole. The guy with me went to town and cut snakey's head off with a shovel. He didn't quite get the head off, so we sat him in a bucket of water to make sure. Plus, apparently they are still venomous 30 minutes after death.
Here's the picture:
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| Upon closer inspection, we actually believe it is a copperhead |
We actually ended up burying it right next to where the blood from my nose bleed was, so it kinda looked like we were putting on some sort of a Satanic ritual.
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| A hard days work |
After that fun, we finish up our job (at first wary of the possibility of more snakes or creatures) and go shower off. We were soooo filthy. And completely exhausted. Part of the reason we headed in was actually because a nasty storm was brewing. Finally all showered and clean, we sit down before we head out and look out our window. All we saw was a roof floating across the water. Turns out our dock, adorned with boat, electricity and everything, had become unattached from its pilons. Luckily we ran out, jumped on, and secured it with three things of rope onto a tree and the remnants of one of the pilons.
So I'm not too sure where that leaves us. The dock is currently still roped up, but we did get the boat back down and into the marina. I just hopes it sorts itself out without leaving TOO big of a dent in our wallets...
Our situation reminds me, in part, of the Money Pit (the movie). Just hope it ends a little happier. :)
Well, thanks for listening to my woes and I sure hope things slow down soon. More on Hawaii tomorrow. Or the next day. Next time I get some more free time.
I hope you enjoyed the stories as much as we enjoy looking back on that turmoil.
Who is stupid enough to live by "We do not sow" anyway? Rely on the rest of the world's stupidity to survive? Ha!
:)
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