Why? Because my biggest fear is slightering through it or was, if I can believe my better half, who tries to make me believe that he accidentally killed it when mowing the lawn. If you are a regular reader of Mummy Alarm, you might know what I am talking about: snakes. I am absolutely petrified of them. I only have to see a snake on telly and nightmares are guaranteed to accompany me for the following two weeks. I start shaking, I start sweating and I feel like I am about to faint. When I dream about snakes, I get so hysterical that I scream myself into a kind of trance. I jump up and shout and scream and kick but I don't actually wake up or remember it. The only way I find out that something has happened is either my other half telling me about it or the feeling that I have when I get up. My entire body is aching. I feel like I've run a marathon and I have a sore throat. I find it scary that my body gets out of control like that and I don't want to pass my fear onto Amy because that's exactly how I got to my phobia - through my mum - but I honestly have no idea how to fight my fears.
Now, there wasn't actually a snake in our garden, it was an Anguis fragilis - a common slow worm - but to me it doesn't really make a difference that it is a lizard and not a snake slithering through our garden, the place that is meant to bring me joy and relaxation. Ok, a snake has no ears but a slow worm has and apparently they have eyelids that blink which snakes don't have either, but it's not that I would go anywhere near this creature to examine their differences. So my mind tells me "Snake, Snake, Snake, Snake, Panic!!!" and that's exactly what breaks out when I think about going into the garden and seeing one of them. Ben swears that the slow worm he saw (knowing my fear, he didn't even tell me about it in the first place) died in his little lawn mower accident but who says that there aren't more of them? Who says that there isn't a nest somewhere? I am now absolutely paranoid whenever I go outside and I either have to come up with a way of getting rid of whatever might be living in our garden or learn how to fight my fear of it. I think pest control might be the easier option...
Have you any creepy crawlies in your garden? How do you deal with them?
