First Ticks, Now Snakes, What Next?

For a family who loves the outdoors, Mother Nature isn't loving us back lately. First, when we were out in Massachusetts we found a deer tick embedded in Claire's arm (major Lyme disease area). After consulting with a local pediatrician out there, we were told all we could do was wait to see if any symptoms like a rash, fever, loss of appetite or fatigue developed. Nate and I were both kicking ourselves because we had noticed the tick earlier but didn't recognize it as a tick because it was so small. So, of course, we were watching Claire carefully, and she seemed fine...until Monday night when she didn't eat dinner. Tuesday morning she had a fever and was pretty subdued, so I called the doctor's office (of course my doctor was out so I had to talk to a nurse on call). The doctor felt we should bring her in for an examination where she ruled out any other obvious sources for the fever. After consulting with an infectious disease specialist and a pediatrician they all agreed it was best to play it safe and put Claire on a three week/three time a day course of antibiotics. We're happy to say the fever responded immediately, though Claire still seems a little out of sorts. The doctor says this treatment "should" take care of an exposure to Lyme Disease.

Thus, I spend Tuesday and Wednesday basically holding a sick, fussy child and was hoping to get out this afternoon and take Claire to the county fair for a few hours. We had been playing outside in the morning and I left the garage door open after coming inside to put Claire down for a nap. After she woke up and had lunch, I gathered our belongings and heading out to the garage to load the Subaru. I briefly considered letting Claire crawl down the few steps into the garage as she likes to do but for some reason just decided to keep holding her. Thank Goodness! As I passed the front bumper to get around the car, I saw and heard a coiled rattlesnake about two feet away right in the garage. I know I let out a scream and dashed back inside the house. My next thought was, "What about the dog?" I didn't see him on the porch so I'm worried he's already been bitten and is off licking his wounds somewhere. I'm calling Nate and screaming for the dog at the same time. Hemmie thankfully was just at the entrance to the garage and actually decided to listen for a change, coming directly inside instead of investigating farther. I had to leave a voicemail for Nate, explaining that we were safe, but trapped in the house because there was a rattlesnake in the garage. Nate was just about to take lunch so called me back within minutes and decided right away to come home as we didn't want to NOT know where the rattlesnake was or let him out of the garage to reappear later. (I am now considering the idea of learning at least to shoot something with snake shot.) When he got home, Nate was able to corner the snake and shoot it, and, for a prairie rattler, it was big--about 38 inches long.

We were both shaken thinking about all the worse scenarios that could have happened with a snake and a small child crawling around. We've had snakes on the property before but never this close to the house. I know we are going to be very vigilant about looking at corners and shady spots before taking Claire outside. In both of these situations, scary though they have been, we see how they could have been much worse (i.e. not finding the tick and thus dismissing Claire's fever or having Claire encounter the snake at ground level). Still, when Nate got home I had to ask, "Are you ready to move to a condo in the city yet?" (by the way it's dead in the photo above--don't worry we didn't stop in the middle of the whole situation to take photos for the blog)