My snake friend was murdered....most people will think me crazy.

[Critters2]

I can think of only 2 or 3 places where I could post this without being considered completely nuts, but this has been an awful morning for me.

There's been this garter snake hanging around my yard and the church yard for months. He often suns himself on the steps to the private entrance to my office, or on the sidewalk between my office and my house. Honestly, we've become friends. At first, he'd panic and slither off into the grass when I walked by. But I'd always speak to him, and in time he'd just sit there and I'd step over or around him. And keep talking to him. In time, when I walked up to him, he'd raise up...like a cobra, very cool...and I really think this was a greeting to me, a way of acknowledging me. He became my snake friend, and I enjoyed seeing him every day.

This morning, I walked out of my house to go to the office, and there he was...lying on the sidwalk..cut in half. He wasn't dead when I first saw him, and he tried to rise up, but he's literally in half. I can't even talk, I'm so upset. I didn't know what to do. I actually sat on the sidewalk with him for a few moments, watching him bleed and try to move. He's dead now, mercifully so, I suppose.

I'm sure a human did this. If a cat or a predator bird (we have owls and hawks here) had done it, they wouldn't have left him there. They would have taken him as food. This was done to be cruel, and I'm just so upset knowing someone so cruel walked into my yard and did this. And it was really just torture, he died a slow and awful death. I'm so angry and sad at the same time.

I have to make a home visit now, one I can't get out of (certainly not be explaining that my favorite snake has been killed). So, I need to pull myself together. But the senselessness of this is just beyond me.

Thanks for reading.