Am I cursed?

I included this picture from my husband's recent hunting trip. That's right, a bull snake. A wild one-not a pet. IN THE JEEP! Yes, it was somebody's fault for leaving the door open, but still.

Now that your skin is sufficiently crawling, I can say this: I think someone is trying to tell us something. In the last 5 years or so, we've had more than our fair share of run-ins with snakes. Ok, we live in the country, so that allows for more than the average, but I still think it's been excessive-some were harmless, but some were venomous. For example, about 5 years ago, we had a rattler coiled up in the darkest corner of the yard by the house. Turns out, he had a friend under the house with him.

Then about 4 years ago, the first bull snake fried himself on our transformer. at 11pm. on a weeknight where it was still 100 degrees. Thank goodness the electric company fixed it by 2am.

Shortly after that, I'd say probably a month, we were walking at the outlet mall in San Marcos and ran across a snake on the sidewalk in front of one of the stores. Same kind as at our house-a bull snake, I think. Incidentally, the security guard at the mall wouldn't do anything about it, so Clint got one of those expandable hanger things they use to hang clothes up high and took it out to the field behind the mall. He looked like the pied piper with all the people following to get a look at the snake.

About a month after that, there was another bull snake stretched out on top of the chain link fence in our back yard. Through an unfortunate series of events, Clinton ended up jousting with it in the front yard with a leaf rake. Quality entertainment for the neighbors, for sure! That was a really bad season.

The next spring, we were able to hear the snake that took up residence in our attic sliding around. He's been up there since. Fun. NOT!

Pretty much every year since then, we've had a snake blow out our transformer. This year, we had 2.

We hosted a crawfish boil earlier this summer where a guest killed a little rattler in our garage.

Since they excavated the toll road behind us, we've killed several rattlers, a couple per year, by running them over with the car down the road, close to the creek.

Then the snake in the jeep, above.

We could get a barn cat to take care of the snakes around the house. However, the neighbors dogs would see to it that cat didn't last long since they run loose in the neighborhood. Or sulphur. Or any number of things you can do to your house to make it less desirable for snakes to visit or live. That begs the question, though, why do snakes find us EVERYWHERE? I'm convinced there is no solution. We are just plagued by snakes and there's nothing we can do about it. Just call me Medusa (without the whole 'turning to stone' phenom).