BLINDS WIDE OPEN -day 256 A Snake in the Pot

It was late spring Sunday along Three Springs Drive sitting the Brannigan's house open and I was anticipating an eventful open house. This was the second house that the Brannigans had asked us to sell and the previous open houses had drawn in a lot of people. It was about halfway through the open house when I noticed some activity out front. There was a large pot with some type of spring flower in full bloom right at the corner of the garage as people came up to the entry. From the living room window, I saw a lady and two small boys, maybe 8-10 years old jumping around this pot. As I opened the door I asked them politely, "whats happening?". The mom quickly replied for me not to worry, she was just trying to catch a small snake they saw in the pot. I asked what type it was and she calmly told me she had grown up with snakes and knew what she was doing. I said "great," but let me take a look just to see. The canopy of the flower made it almost impossible to see the snake but I did recognize the dark coloration and knew exactly what we were now dealing with. What amazed me was this mom had her hand reaching in and trying to grab this thing and she did not get bit. As I took my leather shoes and moved the flower aside, I said lady, "that's a rattlesnake." She turned white as a ghost and her breathing changed. I think it struck her, she had just escaped, by sheer luck, a very painful, potentially deadly and most embarrassing mistake. The boys were now scared but I looked right at them and said to them "you guys are lucky to have a mom like this, she is like Crocodile Dundee." This was before the Steve Irwin burst onto the seen but the boys knew exactly who I was talking about. They beamed with pride, mom relaxed and whispered a quick thank you. After they were done looking at the house, I grabbed a bucket, captured the snake, went home and had a lesson for Kelsey and Kinsey. They watched our King Snake, take the bites of the Rattler and slowly swallow him down. You see, Kings are great to have around because, the venom of the Rattler, which can kill us, has no impact on the King Snake.

So if you have a snake in the pot, you may want to clearly identify before you say "OOPS."

This is Dave, from The McLaughlin Group, keeping it real in real estate!