So… it turns out I’m really not that tough.
I've been experiencing some major blood-thirst. There are so many creatures plaguing this farm. The deer have come out of the woods with their oh-so-cute (and irritating!) little bambies and are trampling around the fields with complete disrespect for ALL of our fencing efforts. The groundhogs are fat, ugly, and hungry. Where are the coyotes?? And the Raccoons!! Ugh, don't even get me started on their smarmy little faces. Just chowing down on YOUR corn.
So I've been hounding my father to teach me how to shoot a gun. I mean I'm supposed to be a farmer right? I should be able to shoot a gun. It's my Southern-born, Virginia-farm-girl, country-living duty to protect my crops from the local predators. Well, my father is of the opinion that I'm more likely to hurt myself, one of our buildings/cars/animals or god forbid, family members, than hit a groundhog with a shotgun. So, the hunting lessons haven't gone very far. Also (perhaps most importantly), even though he's loath to admit it, my father doesn't actually want to kill the creatures on our property.
Alas, I've been watching all of these pests encroach upon my space... They've become a foil for any farming woe. I'll just shout "f**ing deer!" whenever a frustration hits me—never mind that really the floods/weather are currently wreaking far more havoc than the deer ever have.
So, yesterday (ironically) I had just finished ranting about my animal frustrations and my inability to kill when I found a snake in the hen house. It had its mouth wrapped around one of our eggs. Ah ha! Something I can finally kill. Here's the perfect opportunity and the perfect target. This jerk is just laughing at me, all smugly sitting in the box, expanding his crazy reptilian jaw around that otherwise perfectly delicious farm egg. I said to myself, I'm gonna do it. Here's my moment. I've been talking a big game about killing and this snake is all up in my business, he's going down! I grabbed him, pulled him out of the egg box by the tail, he starts swinging around hissing at me, trying to bite. The chickens are squawking wildly and flying everywhere. My heart is pounding—it's been a long time since I've picked up a snake and this one's mad. I get him outside and I'm looking at him and I freeze. He's actually really quite amazing and it turns out I really don't want to kill him. Also, I don't even know how. I'm just standing there in the middle of the road with this beautiful, big, teeming black snake in a total quandary. I can't let him go, he'll be right back in that hen house in a second. I'm all alone on foot with no means of getting him off the farm and plus, I've been talking a big game all summer about how farmers must kill predators. I had no choice, I just had to kill this snake. So... I did it. It was terrible. I killed him with a rock. It was gross and ugly and heartbreaking and not at all satisfying. I'm pretty sure I lost major karma points. I'm so sorry mister snake...please forgive me.
So the moral of the story is: I'm really not that tough. I don't actually want to kill the irritating varmints that plague this place. I'm pretty sure this admission ruins my farmer street cred and I know it's a bad business decision, but alas, what can you do. I really need to get some cosmic karma points back asap.