Too close for (mommy's) comfort

The boys spent the night with their grandparents (Oma and Opa) last night, and I'm sure they had a blast.  We enjoyed the peace and quiet! *grin*  Aaron drove over to pick them up this morning, and when they got back, Connor wanted to show me his souvenir of their little visit.  Carrying a bug house, he came over to the desk where I was working on balancing the checkbook.  I saw the bug house and I figured that he'd caught some interesting bug (they have some woods/brush on their property and we're always coming across interesting insects when we go over there).  I took a closer look.

There was a dead baby rattlesnake in my dining room.

Now, I'm not normally too squeamish, but it was tough to keep my cool for a minute there!  He rushed on with the whole story: he had been playing outside on the porch and heard the rattle and saw the snake behind one of the chairs.  He stayed well back, looked at it for a minute, then went to go get Oma.  A neighbor came and took care of the snake, and Connor got to bring it home, minus the head.  *shudder*  Now, a dead, headless poisonous snake is much better than a live one, but I was still pretty creeped out by how floppy and limp it was. I managed to suck it up long enough to touch it, but that's about as far as my maternal sacrificial spirit was able to go.  I refused his offer to let me hold it!

The snake before its untimely demise

Connor showing off his (headless) prize

Close-up later at our house (outside, NOT in my dining room!).  Connor wanted to coil it just like he found it, but I didn't want the headless end in the picture!

Close-up of the rattle

We were very proud of him that he remembered what to do and stayed away from it--the lapbook came in handy!  I was also proud to hear that he correctly identified it as a western diamondback rattlesnake (Oma said that he told her it might be an eastern diamondback rattlesnake, but that it was probably western).  I haven't let myself think very hard about what might or could have happened . . . I don't think I will.  Suffice it to say that we'll definitely be wearing boots when we go out in the woods over there!

You know, last year we did a lapbook about tornadoes.  A couple of weeks after that, we had a tornado at our house (a very small one, and we weren't home, thankfully!).  This year, we finish our snake lapbook and then a couple of weeks later Connor finds this rattlesnake.  We believe in hands-on learning in our homeschool, but really!  I'll have to think long and hard about all future lapbook topics!  Oooh . . . maybe the lottery . . .