On just another afternoon at the house, here in Southeast Texas, I was inside resting after another shortened day at work as I am recovering from surgery. 

Suddenly, I heard a horrible thumping noise directly outside my bedroom windows. I knew it was the air-conditioners. We have two units located directly in my backyard behind my room.

I rushed outside already dreading what I would find and hoping it was not a broken air conditioner unit. Replacing anything of that magnitude is not in my budget right now. As I came around the corner I heard a horrible hissing noise like the whole unit was shutting down.

I went back to the house and yelled for Lauren to see if she could come and look at the unit with me to see if there was anything that we could do. As I waited for her to come down I saw what had caused the unit to stop working. I was a little excited to show Lauren as I knew it would scare the crap out of her.
I could see what was at least a 5 foot water moccasin snake completely wrapped around the center of the fan blades in the air conditioner unit. Lauren, of course,  had my desired screaming affect when she first saw the snake dangling from the fan blades. But then reality set in on how we were going to try to fix this.

We looked originally to see if there was someway we could take the top off the unit and get to where the snake was tangled in the hardware of the fan.

We decided we had to get something long enough to reach in through the metal bars of the top of the air-conditioner unit and be able to untwist the snake from his roosting spot inside the air conditioner.

The only thing Lauren and I could find to untwist the snake with were some long kebab skewers that sat in our kitchen drawer. First being smart enough to turn off the electricity we went out to try to undo the snake from the gears. And what we thought was a very delicate procedure where we would take the snake and both of us would hold it and twist it around the center of the blade until we got it around to the other side where we would untwist the body of the snake from his tail. 
It appeared that he was twisted three times,  in and out, up-and-down, as he made his way around the inside of the air conditioner.  In a process that took us about 45 minutes, with Lauren screaming every time she put the skewer through the dead snake, we finally got the snake undone and he dropped to the bottom of the air conditioning unit.  

We went back in the house, push the power back on and waited to see if the air conditioning unit would come to life. It did. I huge sigh of relief came from both Lauren and myself as we thank God for a good luck.

I went back to my spot on my bed happily hearing the air conditioner running outside my window. I actually got a little bit of rest before the TV alerted me to an immediate tornado warning in Richmond, our hometown.

Then Lauren, the five dogs, five cats and I hung out in the interior hallway for the duration of this very frightening tornado that touched down very close to our home. We were all safe,  thank God again. 
I’m telling you, we need a reality show.

Thanks for riding along.