Surprises

          With my grandparents no longer living in their house, it has fallen on my mother to see that the place doesn't fall into disrepair or get robbed. Each week, she ships furniture to various relatives. Each week, she calls me and asks, "Do you want [...]?"
          Last week, she went to oversee the dredging of the pond. This pond is actually across the highway from the house, and only a metal guardrail and three foot-wide bank separates it from the road. The purpose of the dredging was to recover a truck that crashed through the guardrail. When they pulled it out, they found another car...with a body.
          "They finally identified him," Mom said. "The man has been missing for over a year, so at least his family has closure."
          It's just strange to think that a dead guy was pulled from a pond where I used to fish as a child, where I once came upon a black racer, and not knowing it wasn't poisonous, blindly ran through the woods and bolted across the highway without looking. My father caught me up in his arms -  something he rarely did, as I tended to run to my mother.
          I've been terrified of snakes ever since then.