It Finally Happened

I knew that one day something bad would happen to me while running on the trail by myself. Today was the day.

I first went to the trail with the kids on a weekend to ride bikes and it was quite busy. But during the week it can be very quiet. On overcast days, I sometimes don't even see one other person on the trail.

It took me about 2 1/2 months to decide that it would be ok to wear my iPod while I ran. Up until that point, I just didn't feel all that safe and figured it was better for me to be aware of what was happening around me.

Now that the warmer weather is here, the grass on the side of the trail is growing quite tall and there just seems to be less visibility of what is going on in the bushes etc.

So today I set off for my run and everything was going well. I had my ipod in, it was middle of the day and there were a good amount of people on the trail. I was cruising along when all of a sudden I look up and I see...a 2 foot garter snake in front of me.

Now, those of you who know me know I don't "DO" snakes. At all. Never. But here I was, faced with this creature basically laying right in my way. What did I do? I jumped about 6 feet in the air and danced on my tippy toes with my hands flapping. It is the same dance my Mum does when she sees a snake (thanks Mum for passing this on to me!). I also was probably screaming just a little but I couldn't hear myself with the iPod in.

The snake was just kind of sitting there, not wiggling around. So I had 2 choices. To either get past it and keep running, or to turn around and get back to my car. I decided in a split second to not let this snake ruin my run. I didn't let the creepy guy making comments about my cute booty ruin my run and this snake was NOT going to ruin my run either!

So I dashed past it, leaping like a gazelle and probably still flapping my hands. And I lived. And I ran. And my adrenaline was pumping so hard. And then I realized that I had to go back past it again on the way back. And then I wanted to cry.