I hate snakes

I was walking out of work tonight, and nearly stepped on this guy.

And I was reminded of a story.

Many years ago, Heather and I went to Wilmington, NC for a short weekend. While we were there, we were staying with friends of a friend. By which I mean, we were staying with complete strangers. We went over to the house early in the afternoon to meet the people and get the run-down on where they wanted us and what they wanted us to do, and then we left and didn't return until probably 1 or 2 am.

We walked up the driveway to get into the door on the side of the garage, like they asked us to. As Heather reached out to turn the handle, I noticed a pretty sculpture of a tree frog, delicately wrapped around the door jam. The light (that they had kindly left on for us) lit the frog very subtly and showed its nice green color. And then the frog jumped.

It was alive! Totally a real frog. I think I screamed, and I know Heather almost died, and all was chaos as we tried to get inside and escape the sudden alive-ness of the outdoors.