Snake Suspense

Yesterday Nate came running to me yelling; " There's a snake outside! Emily, there is a snake outside!"

Needless to say, I freaked out. " Where is it? What does it look like?" I asked him as I headed towards the back door.

" He's red, and he has diamonds on his back! His head is kind of flat and wide! I think he's a Cobra!" Nate yelled hysterically.

I chuckled when he wasn't looking and then I explained to him that Cobra's don't live in the midwest naturally. I am not sure if I convinced him though. " I think he's a poisonous snake, Emily!" Nate said.

I went outside, and Nate made sure to accessorize me with a digital camera, my cell phone, and a flashlight. Despite all of his caution he went out there with me without any shoes or socks, and seemed ready to climb under the back porch himself to pull wood away and show me the snake.
"Did anything else stand out to you about this snake?" I asked him.

" He was long and skinny." Nate told me. " He has a weird bump on the end of his tail. He had long fangs!" Then he illustrated with his fingers, two inch long fangs.

'Oh great.' I thought. 'For once, I hope he is exaggerating!' With Nate's description about the snake's tail, and the talk about diamond designs on the back, it sounded an awful lot like we were talking about a Rattlesnake.

We didn't end up finding the snake again, which is too bad, because I thought it would be cool to have the rest of the family come home and I would have this impressive story about me killing the snake. Yes if that had happened, it would have shocked a lot of people. And I would have LOVED it.

Instead though, Nate and I came inside the house, and we did a search on Google for snake pictures. I was hoping that maybe he might be able to identify, from memory, what the snake looked like. He looked at the list of pictures, then pointed to one. "That might be it!" He said. " Yes I am sure that it is probably the same kind of snake I saw!"

" Uhhh...No honey, that snake is from Africa..." I told him.

"Oh." He said.