A pretty sunny day ringing with songbird symphonies and soft wind chime melodies is getting ready to say hello to the mystical twilight, the soft magical mist of daylight beginning to dim. The sun is slowly rolling down the horizon and her yellow rays are filtering down through the tree branches highlighting the myriad colors of new green foliage. So beautiful against the pale blue sketch of Father Sky’s sky canvas.

I have been sitting in the porch swing watching Kit Kat play for 30 minutes with a small squirrel like it was a child’s wind up car. She puts the squirrel down on the top porch steps, then sits and watches it run down the sidewalk, across the street, up three steps to that sidewalk, and as it scampers down the sidewalk thinking it has escaped, she peels a cat wheel, runs over to capture it and starts the race all over again. I told her she was a mean girl.

Penelope is depressed she couldn’t join in on the torturing. She got so excited about the prospect of being in on the killing, she almost jumped out of the pen. The sixth time Kat brought the little squirrel back, the squirrel turned left when it jumped off the porch steps and ran through the grass to the yard next door. Kat followed it all around their yard for a while, then just trotted home without it. That was a lucky squirrel. Kat usually kills them and leaves their half eaten carcasses right at the front door as a prize for me.

One time last year she bit a small snake in half and left it under one of the porch swings. When I came out on the porch today after lunch, she was pawing at a pot of purple pansies. I just knew there was a snake behind the pot. I got my shovel and cowardly moved the flower pot and that little squirrel ran out from behind there like he was shot out of a canon. I was so glad it wasn’t Balthazar, my resident king snake. He’s too big for Kat to wrestle. Guess it’s time for cinnamon oil spraying.

You would never believe what oldest brother found on his porch swing chain one day. We are really so much alike in our love of birds and yard flowers and looks like he has the snake attractor gene, too. He found a large snake wound around his porch swing chain. Could not have said anything besides this to depress me that day! I always hold on to the swing chain when I sit in the swing and usually let one leg rest on the porch to keep me swinging. Not dangling my leg since I had the snake on my porch and now I can’t hold the chain, either. Woe is me! And yes, he shot the snake. Middle vet brother said to squirt a snake with the hose pipe. That makes them look for another home. Course my water faucet is right where my snake hides out. I think murder is my weapon of choice.

Fear of snakes is called ophidiophobia. I don’t have a fear of them, I just don’t want one in my house. My fear of snakes is getting up at night and stepping on one of them barefooted. Years ago, I had three of them in the house in Alexander City on the same day. We managed to kill one of them but two of them went under the baseboard in our bathroom. No kidding, for two years I looked under my pillow every night and always put on shoes if I got out of bed in the dark. I was calling for Chief that afternoon of the three snakes saying, “Snake, snake!” He comes in the library and says, “Steak, thought we were having meatloaf for supper.” At the same time my youngest son is in the kitchen yelling, “Snake, snake.” He killed the kitchen snake with the broom handle. The life of Lane. We won’t talk about the snake I killed here in Roanoke in the dining room. I’ve also swept two baby possums out the back door and off the deck. Youngest son said, “If they weren’t dead, they are now.” I got the flashlight to look up the chimney to be sure their mama wasn’t watching for them to come back.

Research says our brain recognizes a snake very quickly. I know mine does! And fear of snakes is usually a learned behavior. Most snakes are harmless and are as afraid of us as we are of them. Yeah, right! And contrary to popular belief they don’t chase you, either. They don’t chase me cause dead things don’t run! When I was a teenager, my daddy took me to our cow pasture below the hospital here in Roanoke and tried to teach me to drive our car with a clutch. I flooded the car with gas so we walked home on the railroad tracks. We clicked rocks together in our hands because Daddy said the noise would scare the snakes away. I clicked those rocks all the way home, never stopped clicking till we stepped off the tracks near home.

Fear can be debilitating or exhilarating. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face… You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” Sometimes the things we fear never come to pass. Sometimes we find out we can accomplish the things we were afraid of and actually excel at them. You gain confidence and strength when you look fear in the face. How we face our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.” I’ve buried a daughter and a husband I deeply loved. I should be able to step over any object in my life’s path now without fear.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” — Nelson Mandela