SNAKE!

Yes, that's right. We had a snake in our backyard today! GROSS!!! The hairs on my arms are still standing up. Let me cleaify. It was small. Like, I thought, at first, that it was one of those cute little lizards. That is until it got close to the house and instead of running up the side of it, like the cute little lizard would have done, it slithered next to it. Wiggly tail wiggling and all. ICK! Since I was gardening and planing my new cilantro plant, I had my garden spade in my hand which made for a nice little projectile that can wound. But, unfortunately, it can't kill to the capacity that I wanted that thing dead. So, after seriously wounding it, I made my 5 year old daughter watch it, from a safe distance up on the porch...it was on the ground and I knew that it could NOT get her, while I ran through the house into the garage to get the long handled shovel and run back through the house. While standing on the porch next to Miss M, I proceeded to chop that sucker into as many little pieces as I could. It's tail was still twitching when I decided it was high time to get back inside. Away from all slithery creatures. You can count on me making my hubby mow more often and I am most certainly moving the little dish with water in it for the birds to drink that is sitting on the ground in my garden. We are taking NO CHANCES HERE PEOPLE!
By the way, I don't know what it was. If you are reading this and have any idea, please let me know. It had a brown body with some "decoration" on it, as in shapes. No stripes going either direction. It did have a bright blue tail. I am pretty sure that it's head was kind of pointy, since I thought that it was a lizard. I'm pretty sure, by the size of it, that it was very young.