House Guests - Invited

We had a great weekend with friends visiting from Brookfield, WI. Tim & Dawn and their three lovely daughters arrived Thursday evening and left Sunday afternoon to take Missy, the oldest daughter, to UT Knoxville to start her sophomore year. We enjoyed and treasure every moment we got to spend together. Dawn and Tim we miss you soooo much!!!

Monday afternoon we had another house guest. This guest, however, was not invited or welcome. Shortly after Timm and I got home from work we were both walking into the great room when Timm noticed something on the floor. He thought at first that someone had left a hanger on the floor, but then IT MOVED. The movement also caught my attention. It didn't just move it SLITHERED and disappeared under the couch. Our uninvited guest was a SMALL king snake (non poisonous). Timm caught it with a long barbecue tongs and relocated it a ways away outside. It has been extremely dry here (no rain since mid July) so we speculate that it was looking for water. I'd gladly set a dish outside for it, perhaps down the street a bit. I'm just very grateful that Timm was home and I didn't have to deal with it alone. We didn't take time to photograph our guest but it looked similar to the one below. It was about a foot long.