One mean snake...

Yikes! I was walking down the sidewalk from my SUV to the apartment yesterday afternoon and I heard this rattling sound on my left. I looked over and there was one mean snake coiled up to strike, rattling his tail in the mulch. I almost jumped out of my skin (and nearly wet my pants!) - I looked him over for markings and checked his tail for rattles - but he was just an ordinary black snake. I must have startled him - but I kept going as fast as I could, considering my hands were full of handbag, ginger ale and my cane - which I was considering using as a weapon if he had, in that evil lurking snake-like way, decided to follow me. You know how strange scenarios start running through your head - in slow motion - I could smack him with the cane and he could slither right up to my hand - or I could try and fling him away with the end of it and he'd hang on and drop off on my head - or wait, wait - I could miss him completely and he would fly through the air as I imagine all snakes can and sink his fangs into my knee... Fortunately, I went one way and he went the other, but I was still seriously freaked out. Which is ridiculously irrational coming from the person who as a teenager once rescued an inert black snake from the middle of the road (he had apparently been stunned by a car) and put it in the bathtub for my father to deal with the following morning. I don't know what I was thinking then, but there was the added bonus of scaring the living daylights out of my mother, so I guess that's probably why I shoved Mr. Black Snake into a box and brought him home. In my old age, however, I have given up my snake rescue ways - now I just want to be wherever snakes are not.