Snakes=Satan

If you know anything about my dear husband Thomas, you know that he is deathly afraid of snakes. When I say deathly, I mean that he would sacrifice MY life in order to get away from a snake. I'm not joking here--we should've written something about snakes into our marriage vows, something like: "In sickness and in health, and in case a snake crosses our path." Once, Thomas pushed me closer to a snake so that he could run away. Another time, he attacked my roommate Katie with a wire coat hanger because she held a dead snake near him.

The most recent snake incident came the other night when my friend Brooke was leaving our house around 11pm. She came back into the house and calmly said "umm, y'all have a snake on your porch," to which Thomas and I both jumped onto the couches. Now, it's alright for me to be afraid of snakes because I'm a girl. But Thomas was literally crouched on the arm of the couch so that he could SEE the snake but didn't have to put his feet on the ground. Meanwhile, Brooke is laughing hysterically. Thomas began ordering Brooke around like a sergeant, telling her how to kill the snake with a 5lb bucket that was also on the porch. Brooke is perhaps one of the sweetest folks we know, so the thought of killing the harmless black snake was appalling to her. However, Thomas insisted that she raise the bucket and attempt to smash the snake with all her might. Brooke turned into an amazon woman for 2.5 seconds and brought the bucket down with the strength of Goliath. The snake flopped off of the side of the porch and has not been seen since.

Thomas now considers Brooke his lifelong hero.

The best part of the whole story is yet to come: I woke up at 7am the next morning to find Thomas flailing about in bed, screaming in his sleep. I knocked him as hard as I could to wake him up, and he breathlessly told me he was having a nightmare in which Brooke dumped a 5lb bucket full of snakes over his head. This dream has now occurred 3 times, only now he dreams that he shoots the snakes with a machine gun. Which is annoying for me, because the flailing about and shouting in his sleep continues...