Venomous visitor.

This morning, I was in my capacious, wheelchair-friendly master bath when my Scottish housekeeper arrived at 0900 HRS. She let herself in with her key. When I emerged she said, "Oh, by the way, Jay, when I was coming in, there was a cute little brown snake coiled up by the door." My front door sits inside of about a four or five foot deep alcove. Sure enough there was a "cute" little pygmy rattlesnake coiled up in the corner. I briefly considered blasting it with my .45, then posting a picture of myself holding it by the tail and grinning like one of the inbred hunters from Deliverance, but decided it was too easy (someone please explain that one to "greenery"). Instead, I went to the kitchen and retrieved my 36" "reacher" or "grabber" that I use to get things off of high shelves. I went out the garage door and approached the coiled snake in my power chair. Even though the sending unit for my indoor/outdoor thermometer, mounted in the alcove about 3 feet above the snake, was already reading 80 degrees, the snake, coiled on the relatively cool concrete and in the shadows, seemed in a hypothermic torpor and not aware of our presence. I reached down and grasped him with the rubber tipped grabber at about one third of his body length forward of the tip of his tail. Even then, he just barely woke up and uncoiled slowly. I held him at arms length until I could deposit him in the vacant lot next door. They're out there folks, and some are their larger diamondback cousins. Stay alert and step lightly.