Earlier today, while smoking a cigarette out on my small back patio, I encountered an animal surprise.
Well, not an animal — a garden snake.

Later, after the appropriate Googling, I found a lookalike, way-similar to the one pictured at left, though, with a much-wider golden streak down the body. Supposedly, a Coast garter snake (T. e. terrestris), or whatever, non-rattler.

(Illustration found here).

My patio is in two parts: A tiny concrete pad, then a L-shaped stretch of earth with weeds that flower. As I basked in the warm sun, pulling on the smoke, out of the corner of my eye, amidst the weeds that look like turnip greens, a bigger-than-normal movement, and out into the open, the  little snake.
Odd shit that happens seemingly out of place — for a few blinks, the scene felt like out of a dream, unrealistic. But I have my priorities with snakes, and my eyes way-quickly scoped out the snake tail — no rattlers, teeny-tiny or otherwise.
And the creature just slithered off easily into big weeds next to the privacy fence and out of sight. Maybe now in the neighbor’s little patio regions. Maybe a foot long, maybe a bit longer, and hefty for its tiny size.
Not so much a fright, more of just WTF!

There a shitload of all kinds of spiders, snails, bugs of all descriptions in my micro-preserve — spiders have claimed the corners, and my fold-up chair, and are always moving around — but this the first snake. Now I’ll have to watch myself and not accidentally step on the guy, which would most-likely cause me to shit my pants and scream-out like a baby.
Snakes are way-not my favorite things — in fact, snakes are creepy.

And they’re creepy in the grass. Or weeds, in this case.
And can be outrageous if in places not normally found:

A man was rushed to a hospital after a snake bit his penis while he was relieving himself in a toilet, according to hospital officials in Israel.
The man, 35, of northern Israel was bitten on Friday after the snake suddenly appeared from inside the toilet.
The man suffered minor injuries from the bite; fortunately the snake was not venomous.
…
The man told emergency workers it happened after he went to the toilet to relieve himself and suddenly felt a strong burning sensation in his penis.
One of the paramedics said the man told him he has seen the snake and it was very small.
According to the paramedic, despite the location of the injury, the man managed to stay calm and even had a laugh with workers at his own expense.
‘This is the first time I’ve seen a snake bite like this,’ the paramedic said.

The guy was most fortunate:

It is ‘snake season’ currently in the Middle East and among the most dangerous are the black snake or desert cobra, the horned desert viper, the Palestinian viper which is the most common poisonous snake in Israel, the saw-scaled viper, or the false horned viper.

Or just crazy — via HuffPost:

A Florida woman had an unusual request when she pulled into the Vista BMW in Coconut Creek on Monday morning.
Her 7-foot-long pet boa constrictor had gotten loose in her Mini Cooper, and she needed help pulling it out.
“My son and my wife are herpetologists, and we’ve had snakes as pets, so everyone in the dealership knows to call me when there is a snake involved,” Vista employee Mitch Packer told WSVN.
Packer in turn called Chris Braun, a mechanic, who gamely extracted the creature despite a dislike of snakes, according to the station.
As Vista BMW service adviser Jim Cocchiola videotaped the event, Braun removed a taillight cover and pulled the very large boa out of the car’s rear body panel.

The mechanic guy is the hero of that tale, ‘despite a dislike of snakes,’ he ‘gamely‘ got the job done.