-- and being grateful that the friend who would pass out wasn't there to go face down in the mulch.

Sounds like you can't trust your sweetie to remove snakes back to the garden...;^) As always, Mom gets the hard job. I should post a couple of my Mom stories sometime. She panicked two weeks out with a new baby (hormones, my guess) but by the third kid, she could haul a dead bird out of a dog's mouth in nothing flat!