Ophidiophobia

Warning: Bad Words.  Sorry.

I have a phobia.  I've had it since I was very young.  I am deathly afraid of snakes.
I think that, as phobias go, it's a pretty reasonable one.  It's not, for example, a fear of aluminum foil. (no really, it's a thing.  I saw it on Maury.)
Aluminum foil cannot kill you.  As far as I know.
Snakes, however, can.
They can also try to kill your dogs.  But that is foreshadowing.

I can trace my phobia to its roots.  When I was very young, I stepped on a snake.  I was innocently walking into my house, minding my own business.  And in the brick pad in front of our door, a snake was hiding in the cracks.  I stepped on something squishy, looked down, and lost my shit.  Instead of running inside, I ran away.  I climbed a fence for the first time in my life, perched at the top and screamed for my daddy.  Bye-bye, snake.

Nightmares about snakes are a very common occurrence in my life.  I don't even like to see a picture of a snake.  They just terrify me.

Now, in case you're new here....I live in the woods.  I'm talking DEEP in the woods.  Very swampy woods.  I've lived here since December and until today, I had only seen one snake and it was dead.  Fine by me.  The only good snake is a dead snake.  (I'm truly sorry to any snake lovers.  I never asked for this phobia, nor do I control it.)

Even though we live in the middle of nowhere, we walk our dogs, they don't run loose.  One of those reasons is because of snakes.  So today, I was walking our two big dogs.  One on a leash, the other without a leash because he's usually very good about staying close and coming when called.

We had two storms this weekend so the woods are nice and wet and swampy.

So as we're walking down the long, muddy driveway, we encounter a snake.  I'm not sure what kind; I'm not a snake expert and I was not exactly in a detached, observational state.  I was in more of a FREAKING THE FUCK OUT state.  But there's a good chance it was a water moccasin.  Very poisonous snakes.  (I just bit the bullet and Wikipedia'd it.  IT WAS A MOCCASIN.  Shoot me now.)

The biggest dog, Patchy, walked RIGHT UP ON IT.  I pulled on him and his COLLAR SLID RIGHT OFF OF HIS NECK.  And the snake raised its head up in what I assume is an "I'm about to bite you" pose.
I had to get closer to the snake in order to pull Patchy away from it.  He finally backed away but Bo was on the OTHER side of the snake, exploring God-knows-what, and totally not listening to my cries for him to COME.  Finally, he came and thankfully, didn't notice the snake or get to close to it.  He's still a puppy and surely would have explored the neat moving thing in the road.

I raced inside, told Byron what happened, and then absolutely lost my shit.  Crying, snot everywhere, a little hyperventilating thrown in for good measure.

I knew it was only a matter of time before I encountered a snake here.  In fact, I stupidly thought that maybe after I finally saw one, I would calm down a bit.  Maybe the fear of seeing one was the worst part.  But what I didn't anticipate was that combined with seeing my first snake here, I would be desperately trying to save my beloved dogs from the snake.  It was a horrible combination.

So basically, I told you all of that to ask you this.

1. Do you know of any apartments for rent in the top floor of the highest building on the planet?

2. Is it true that there are no snakes in Ireland? How much is a one-way ticket there?

3. Do you have any phobias? Please share and make me feel a little better.