The first day on the job...
Mike and I were mucking out the old duct work and insulation under a downtown Charleston home when Mike made a new friend. He was comfortably nesting above a piece of old insulation. When Mike pulled it down, they came face to face.
I did mention that this was a downtown Charleston house, right? The crawlspace was about about 2 feet high—wiggle room at best. When this guy landed in front of Mike's face he had no where to go. This type of thing happens fast, and the brain sees those markings and shouts "danger!"
Without the ability to get out of his way, Mike and this little guy gazed into each other's eyes waiting for the next move.
Some of you might know Mike spent a lot of time in the Amazon and is not afraid of many living things including snakes, but when you don't have a way to get away, that changes the dynamic of an encounter like this.
After realizing that this little guy was just a corn snake, Mike carefully grabbed him up and brought him outside, out of our way—Snake Buddy coulda gotten killed in there with all the demo we were doing. He was so docile that I swear he purred when I rubbed his neck. We were tempted to keep him as our mascot, but we decided to let him go at the neighbor's house...just kidding! We took him to nice natural area where he is "recycling insects and rodents" as Rudy Mancke would say.
