Adventures with Snakes

I get it-snakes are on the same planet I am....however I don't have to like them or want to be anywhere around them.  Sadly, our chicken/hay barn and the fact the chickens are laying eggs kind of attracts the slithery little creatures to my domain.

Once, I came upon a snake with its jaws stretched open wide to eat MY egg!  That hootch! 

Now the picture is not so clear, but that black long thing is not a chicken...and does not belong in my barn.  Luckily one of the neighbors (who likes snakes) came and relocated it for me  :-)  Yeah!

Then!  There's another snake, bigger than this guy, who J and I had randomly seen in the hay bales, but never got a good chance to snatch it/relocate it/kill it/etc in the barn.  Until I go outside with my little egg basket and polka-dot vintage sunglasses and come literally face-to-face with him!  There's a break in the hay bales of about a foot by 2 feet space that a couple of hens decided is their little roosting place.  Well I'd seen the snake in there before, but at the back end.  This time, I go into the barn and look in the hole and see the dark form that is the snake.  However, my eyes hadn't quite adjusted to the darkness...and this guy's head was about 6 inches from mine-like we were nose-to-nose!  Agghhhh!  I screamed, the chickens balked, the snake was scared, even the neighbors a mile down the road could probably hear me.  He slithers back in there and then I get pissed--how dare this creature try to overtake my barn and eat my eggs!!!  I start hitting the bales with a stake, screaming all kinds of expletives about the injustice and what did he think he was doing, blah blah blah.  Oof!  Well I continue on my egg-gathering adventure, I walk around the outside of the barn and have a thought.  (The barn has windows that used to have glass, but now are covered with hay.)  I bet that little mofo is trying to slip out the back!  And sure enough he was!  His little head is poking out, tongue sticking out, I start throwing rocks and sticks at the whole in the barn.  Who do you think you are mofo!!!  And walked off in a huff.

Well J gets home and I retell my story, and we go back out there...and what do you know?  That snake still has his head poking out!  The nerve!  So my manly husband grabs this snake by the head and pulls it out!  Which wasn't an easy task because this fatty snake who had been living large on my eggs, was like a fat kid in a tiny suit of hay bales.   Then the snake got relocated...here he is: