Today I was doing some yard work and like usual I try to catch this Eastern Garter when I see her basking in the sun. I try to get her out of the way when I’m cutting the grass. She (I’m guessing she’s a she) lives in a pile of folded tarps with a wooden pallet on top. I caught her and placed her in a bucket with a night crawler and the worm was gone when I finished the lawn. I guess she was hungry.

So I had the bright idea of showing her to my 2-½ year old son before I release her. My 2-1/2 year old loves animals. When I took her out of the bucket, she was pretty grumpy. But seamed to calm down as I held her for a few minutes. Then I showed her to my son and said he could pat her. So all of a sudden he put his hand around her and before I new she swung back and bit his pinky finger. She just nicked him. Didn’t hang on or anything. It was lightning fast! Poor guy. He flinched a little, but didn’t miss a beat. Thankfully he didn’t get scared. I tried to keep it as positive as possible.

Unfortunately…his finger started to bleed and my wife got really, really MAD with me. So we cleaned it up with hydrogen peroxide and put Neosporin on it. I was afraid he was going to be traumatized for life. But thankfully he was like nothing happened. He was so cool, he even helped me release her back in the tarp pile.

But I felt soooooooooooo bad. I guess it could have gone a lot worse…right? To make me feel better, do you have any similar stories with your kids?

And my other question is: Do you think he will get an infection, like staph or salmonella? I've been bit a ton by garters when I was a kid and I never got infected. But it's different now with my little baby.