I'm really not very good at being a country girl

I don't like it when things have to die. Even when they're 5 foot long black snakes that are trying to eat my chickens. (note: this is the second snake I've had to ask my dad to kill. Dorothy says they come in pairs, so maybe this will be the end of the black snakes. A girl can hope.) Life would be a lot better for me if I could just catch them and throw them out into the woods and they'd get lost and not come back to the chicken coop. I'd be all for keeping them as pets (I mean, they don't bite people, so why not?) but my parents are antipathetic about the idea, and aside from putting them in an aquarium and feeding them crickets, the only way to keep them from finding their way back to the chickens is to kill them. Which makes me sad.

Speaking of chickens, I've always heard that guineas are social birds. If that's true, I have defective guineas. The chickens let me catch them and cuddle them, and they even stop flapping after a minute or two. The guineas flap and squirm for as long as I hold on to them, and seriously endanger my eardrums. Have you ever heard guineas? They're loud little bastards.