Our house backs on to the woods, which most of the time is wonderful.  We regularly see deer running up the hill behind our house, and have no end of humming birds, cardinals, woodpeckers etc. 

I like nature and absolutely love the setting of our house.  It is peaceful, calming, and usually 5-10 degrees cooler than it is just a few minutes away in Annapolis.  However, nature has its downsides too.
 
We have a pool and recently we got hit with a big storm that brought down a lot of tree limbs and leaves and general detritus.  I’ve been trying to scoop it all out of the pool on a regular basis and keep our filters clean blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, I was emptying one of the filter traps and as I walked by one of our box hedges that surround the pool, I looked down and saw a black snake curled up peacefully in its branches. 
 
I would like to tell you that I stared at it with scientific curiosity, or even that I took several careful steps backward.  But no, I screamed like a girl.
 
I am not using that term in a derisive way.  I am not suggesting that I screamed and that in my screaming I resembled a scared member of the fairer sex.  No, I am saying that when I screamed, the pitch and timber most resembled that of a 6 year old girl.
 
I have a fairly high voice to begin with.  I regularly get called ma’am at the McDonalds drive through and when I show up for choir rehearsal, no one bothers to ask me what part I sing.  But still, this was beyond the realm of a man with a high voice screaming.  I am confident that if any of our neighbors heard the scream, they all thought to themselves “Oh my, It sounds like Gargamel is after those darling smurfs again.”
 
The wussy scream aside, I wish I could tell you what it is about snakes that freaks me out so much.   I am a relatively intelligent person, and looking back, it seems like the snake was probably pretty harmless.  It was maybe the width of a bratwurst and probably only 4 feet long at the most.  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t poisonous.  It was just sitting there on the branches, flicking its tongue looking evil.
 
That’s just all there is to it.  Snakes look evil.  I don’t know why.  I almost stepped on an alligator when I was 8 and didn’t make nearly as much of a ruckus as I did today running away screaming from a snake as if it was going to leap out of the tree and fly after me. 
 
No, there’s nothing logical about it.  It’s all primal gut instinct.  Which is why I’m going to make my wife empty the filters tomorrow.  That way, if she does scream like a girl, at least she’ll have an excuse.