Snakes Alive! (Or why I didn't sleep so well the other day)

Have you ever seen a Brown Snake?  They're as thin as a noodle, yet long and brown and have a distinctively snake-like head.  Once I was almost attacked by several of them, when I mistook a heap of Brown Snakes for a pile of earthworms.  They're just a little thinner and a little longer.  Oh, and much, much more aggressive.

So imagine my horror the other night when I crept out of bed for a glass of water... and was greeted by a thin, brown, six- or seven-inch Brown Snake crawling across the living room floor!

 

Yes, a snake.  I fled to the closet and frantically paced around looking for some weapon-worthy object.  "Um, Eric?  Um, Eric?" I kept calling to my peacefully-snoring husband.  He awoke to see me standing before him in a pink nightgown, wearing an oversized hiking boot (his), and sporting a rather panic-y looking expression.  "What are you doing?"  He sounded so calm -- as if a pajama-clad person tromping around in hiking boots at midnight was the most natural thing in the world.  "There's a snake in the living room!"  I announced.  "I am going to step on him!"  

As I marched out of the room, my courage flagged.  What if the snake sprang at me as I tried to step on him?  What if he bit my foot -- the other one, that didn't have the hiking boot on it??  So I took off the shoe, wildly threw it at the snake, and fled back to the closet for more ammo.  I gathered up every shoe I could carry and was looking around for more... But by this point Eric was already in the dining room.  "Good!" I thought, "Now the snake is really in trouble!"  I wasn't sure what Eric would do to him, but I knew his days in our living room would be numbered...  

Eric stood over the helpless reptile, and I waited expectantly to see what would happen next. "Its a worm," he announced.   We turned on a light.  We looked closer.  Sure enough, it had that distinctive, segmented, pink-little-worm-body.  It was lacking that triangular, serpentine head.  And, as Eric pointed out to cinch the matter, it wasn't slithering toward the dining room.  It was inching.  

So we put the poor, battered worm outside and went back to sleep.  Well, Eric went back to sleep, that is.  It was awhile after my misadventure before I was ready to close my eyes.  What a scare for the worm and I!