Snakes Alive but Better to Me DEAD

I usually post pictures I run outside and shoot as the sun is going down or coming up or when the storm clouds gather. Montana is truly spectacular and a vision of a masterpiece. Yesterday however, I experienced a first (and hopefully last)of coming very close to a creature I have truly feared in my mind since a child. A snake . . . but not just any snake, the one that rattles. I didn't get to hear rattles as this was one huge critter and part of his body is still under the brush in the corner of the yard at a piece of picket fencing. Don't know if I want to be the one to remove him from his resting ground, but he has got to vacate the premises. Once I spotted part of his body going between the rails on the picket fence I ran into the house and called my husband to come see. He went back into the house and got his shotgun and put a bullet where it was needed.

As a youth in Tennessee, my foster family had a weekend getaway trailer on a piece of property on Signal Mountain. Within walking distance was a fishing pond where we walked to and then blazed a trail through a little thicket (trees/brush) to get to its banks. I never went alone as my brother (11 months younger than me) was my traveling buddy. We had fun and even some minor injuries as I pierce his ear once with a fishing hook (all the way through) and then tried to catch his backside. But what ended my trips was when we spotted two large water moccasins in the water coming close to us. I refused other trips after that. The experience never deterred Robert from continuing trips there and through the woods. Then we also had a distant foster relative as a youth bitten by a copperhead on his finger a little later. He required steroid treatments for years to combat the poison and it changed his body dramatically over his teenage years. I remember always being fearful of opening drawers in the trailer because stories had been told of how snakes can get into a house and like to get into drawers. Even had a foster aunt that went to open her front door after an outing only to have a black snake fall on her head that had been resting on the door frame. Don't know how she managed not to have a heart attack as Aunt Myrtle always seemed old an fragile to me. Then my final snake tale other than yesterday's experience, is a dream I had a few weeks ago. My family had been to see a place that is for sale just before the dream. The living room inside had the darkest forest green carpeting that looked almost new. Well, in the dream I was inside this empty house again standing on the green carpet and a cobra (as plain as watching a movie) was coming at me when I startled awake. I told you snakes bring fear in me!! I didn't forget that dream. Don't know how to interpret it or if interpretations of dreams are even real, but this was a nightmare I don't want to have or live again. So to me Snakes Alive but Better DEAD. Don't know if I want to have these on a dessert either -- candy snakes