SNAKES ALIVE!

You have a beautiful view in the Yuma Foothills if your house faces the desert and the Gila Ridge Mountains. Unfortunately you also have snakes; rattlesnakes. One lady I know tells the story of the morning she came out early to get the newspaper and found a rattlesnake coiled up on her driveway. As luck would have it she couldn't raise the neighbors on either side to at least provide moral support in getting rid of the critter. Obviously she didn't want the rattlesnake to stay on the driveway when the pets and kids came out so she devised a "snake catching" strategy. She took a large trash container and lined it with a plastic bag. Then she took her garden rake and, with a boost of courage, picked the snake up and dumped it in the plastic bag and quickly closed it up. The next step amazed me: she put the bag in the trash. Can you imagine the trash guy who saw a bag jiggling and perhaps even opened it to see what was causing the movement? Not to worry, the lady said. The bag with the rattlesnake sat in the trash for several days in triple digit heat. It surely didn't live long.