Snakes On A Path... Get it?... Like the movie! Never mind :-P

Hey everyone!

It’s starting to feel lonely again with no pictures… on this page anyway. It also feels like I’m talking to myself… but it’s okay I have a tendency to do that quite often :-P.

Back on track though! Yes so going around England was loads of fun, and the Saturday before we were leaving my aunt (Natalie) was in a cycling contest for a charity more to the north of England. It was a 100 mile cycle and she did it :-)! Woo! So we got her a miniature cake saying Natalie, Worlds Best Cyclist. I’ll put a picture up of it :-P.

Someone found us a house and it looked okay in the pictures… So we packed everything up after being in England for a month, said our goodbyes, with a lot of tears, even from Jett. And off we went on a 17 hour drive! Well actually it was about two or three hours and then we arrived at the underground train. You park your car on it, stay in your car and half an hour later you’re in France.

I thought the underground train would be a lot more exciting… but it was just like sitting in your car that you’ve parked in a long, white room, with little windows on the sides that you couldn’t really see out of, but it got the job done anyway, it’s not as if they could have put a theme park or anything in there :-P.

Now it was the long 15 hour haul… for my mom anyway since she drove the whole the way, with a break only now and then for coffee. The first stop we made in France was at a little side-store that had a coffee bar inside and was still open. So we went inside and you’d never believe the odds! There were two guys there that were driving to Belgium… but they spoke English :-)! We chatted for a while, they said you might see us at our next stop (we didn’t :-P). And then off we went again. I couldn’t really sleep the whole time; a few times I dozed off but was interrupted by an elbow in my side or a leg in MY foot space!

It was slightly… okay very cramped in the back of the car… first there was Venetia, then Karen and then Gizmo taking up when my feet were supposed to go… and of course me. I always get the middle seat >:-. So I was extremely squashed :-P and it was very difficult to get to sleep because I didn’t have a door or anything to put my head against, so I got very grumpy when I was woken up after saying that I was going to sleep and not to bother me… Grrr!

It was alright though, when we finally arrived and met up with the owner of the house, my dad filled in the papers, she showed us around and then left. It was okay… at least this house’s kitchen was tiled, it had more than five rooms, a sofa and even a T.V. It also came with the stove, fridge and washing-machine. Big upgrade from our Sicilian house… or so I thought until there were more aliens, too many flies and dare I say it… MICE!

There were upsides to the house too though. A five minute walk from the house was the gorgeous lake that all of my fishing photos were taken at, an absolutely gianormous garden and even two pear trees… but they were very tall pear trees so I only ever managed to whack one off and after all of my effort when it finally tumbled down… I could hardly bite into it because it wasn’t ripe yet! So I let Gizmo have a go at tackling it then threw it away after the pear having several miniature puncture wounds from Gizmo’s vampire teeth :-P.

In that house we were also surrounded by fields, and just a few minutes walk was an animal sanctuary… which could explain the fly situation, seriously every day I was swatting at least 20 flies, but they just kept coming from nowhere! I had a pet spider there though, he sat in the lounge/dining room/kitchen in a little corner. Yes I know, huh :-S, it was a big room that housed all of the downstairs rooms in one :-P.

Anyway yes so the spider was so much fun to watch catching a fly and then quickly wrapping it up! I don’t know what happened but sadly one day (a few days before we were leaving for the new house), I came down stairs to find that my spider had shrunk! Instead of my big one it was this little tiny baby, he was pretty cute actually but meant that he couldn’t catch the flies any more!

Speaking of spiders! Woah! At that house there was an absolutely gianormous spider that lived above one of the bushes outside by the house. It was the identical colouring of the bumble bees that it ate! Venetia took a few pictures of him, so I’ll also put that picture up.
They were quite a few insects in that house actually… the most annoying… and scariest were the giant aliens that fell down by you when you went to close the window! I don’t know how many times I almost had a heart attack in that house! I did love the geckos and lizards that came into the house though, especially the baby ones!

Oh my word they were the cutest! About as big as my baby finger, in length! I saw one in the kitchen then decided to go out on a hunt for them outside… can you tell how bored I was :-P? After just a few minutes I spotted one and tried to catch him, he wriggled away under the rocks though. The next week or so I actually caught one, kept him for an hour or so then let him go in the grass again. The one in the kitchen lived in a little hole in the wall and would come out onto the window sill every now and then to sun bathe. I tried to lure him out with bread… it didn’t work.

Even in the new house there used to be one baby lizard that would come out and sun bathe on the patio, since it’s gotten cold I haven’t seen him around lately…

There’s been loads of insects here, once there was even a preying-mantis! Now he was cool! We named him Barley because of the look of barley on his stomach. Woah, and there was also this giant caterpillar, he was huge and very pretty too :-P!

The things that weren’t so cool though were the amount of snakes… the first one was when my mom, Venetia and I were going walking, we were about 15 minutes into our usual routine when suddenly my mom started walking backwards and saying… a sentence over and over again… I don’t think I’ll type it out :-P. The snake was about as long as my leg but once we got closer, we noticed how flat it was… it had been run over or something so not much danger there. We carried on going.

A few days later my dad and I were sitting outside practising our French, I was looking at the book and my dad jumped up told me to go to the other side of the garden, so I stood up even though I didn’t know what was happening… then I saw that large, green snake making its way with a lifted head toward my dad. Gizmo also seemed to notice it at this stage… he just got up and began waddling over to it. My dad yelled at him and Gizmo came running to me. I ran to the house put Gizmo inside then went to find something heavy for my dad, since we still hadn’t had the internet in this house and also hadn’t been able to find out what snakes where poisonous. I found a large concrete type thing that was lying by the house, as I did this I heard a THWUMP and quickly grabbed it and carried it back to my dad. Saw the snake limp… not limp like walking weirdly… mainly because snakes slither. I mean that it was dead.

It was really sad, but my dad had to since it stood on its tail and was getting ready to strike. Later on we found out that green snakes aren’t poisonous here either, it’s just the small black ones that can kill. It’s also the big green ones that’ll act all dangerous but the little ones will run… well slither away.

One day I was brushing my hair, stood by the window and because it was hot I decided to have a good look around to see if I could spot a snake. What are the odds! This thing which I thought was a lizard’s head at first was coming over a rock and moving toward the house, I kept watching it for a second and then realised what it was once its whole body was visible and no legs were to be seen. It began slithering against the house, this is when I yelled for my mom and told her that there was a viper (the small, black, poisonous one) outside. My mom ran outside to see if she could kill it or catch it, but it was already making its way for the rocks and had gone. From then on I made sure that I watched Gizmo and didn’t let him go into the tall grass when he went outside… I also started to wear shoes when I went outside as well :-P.

Oh another snake incident was when we came to have a look at the new house. My mom and I walked by the house and you’d never guess what crossed the path right in front of us! Yes, that’s right another snake! It was only a green one though, but it was still big and began coming for us, we backed away quickly, so it kept slithering and lifted itself over the person’s fence next door… moving to this house I thought we were escaping the snakes!

No other snake stories though… also no fishing ones! It’s just become so cold! I’m hoping to hear from you all soon!

- Bianca