When animals attack

If you within 30 miles of my house in Columbia, SC last night; you may have heard my wife and the woman next door screaming and darting around the yard. Apparently, the neighbor saw a snake underneath a box from her new treadmill. Though I didn't see her reaction to this I can't begin to imagine what it looked like. My wife, who hadn't even seen the snake at this point, reported the story to me over dinner, and she reacted to as if the snake were around her neck while she was telling the story. So as any rural Ky boy might do, I finished dinner and proceeded to investigate the scene. There was a box, but alas nothing under it at that point. I Searched her side yard (between our houses) and the back : nothing? Well, just as I had given up and was walking back to the front yard where my neighbor and my wife were standing, glaring down between the houses in anticipation, I got a glimpse of something behind a water meter. It was indeed the "perp" to use a police term. The mere anouncement that I had found the snake sent the two women into hysterics. I some of the statements included "Oh my god, be careful." Now this is a two foot long snake not a tiger. Admittedly, I had never seen a snake that looked like this and not being well versed in South Carolina herpetology, I further consulted another neighbor down the street. Now here is a guy who has a two week old son and has spent the past two weeks watching a sleepy baby breast feed and "visiting" with his inlaws. I hadn't even gotten a sentence out and he was screaming to his wife upstairs "Honey, there is a snake down the street and they need me. " I've never seen someone so anxious to get out of the house in my life. So the two of us get a trash can and a broom and proceed to do little other than successfully "piss off" this little yellow brown creature. Now I want to take a moment to point out that I have seen many, many snakes. Have caught many with my own bare hands and never really thought much of it. THERE WAS NO WAY I WAS GETTING NEAR THIS ONE. It wasn't big but, my god, I've never seen anything like it. It stood up (think the cobras in Indiana Jones) and progessed to move back and forth between striking without hesitation. It was not going into any garbage can. We chased it aroung the house for a half hour. Owen, who was now free from his house, was bouncing around the yard seemingly running along the side of the house like something out of the matrix. It finally got hung in an attempt to get into the air conditioning unit. It was was cut badly. We reconviened with the women in the front yard. They had added the neighbor's 20-something year old neice. The neighbor wanted it out dead. The neice didn't want to kill it. My wife just looked terrified. Since it was technically the neighbors snake and it was hurt we put it out of its misery. I don't think it was poisonous and the nearest thing I can find is a picture of a pine snake. It isn't that, but of the pictures of South Carolina Snakes it's the closest.