Signs of the apocalypse in my backyard

Some crazy shit has been happening in my backyard. A year or so ago, I found a crawfish out there in the grass. How the hell did that happen? We are miles from the nearest natural water source. I put the crawfish in my pond, and haven't seen or thought about it since, until yesterday.
Yesterday, I noticed that one of my rose bushes now resembles a rose tree, and needs to be pruned. It's probably not the right time of year to hack off a bunch of rose branches, but my rose bushes seem to thrive on abuse and neglect. Fig 1.


That's a six foot fence behind the roses.

So out I go, pruners in hand, to cut some roses. One snip, two snip, MOTHER OF GOD IS THAT WHAT I THINK IT IS??!?
Fig 2.



It's a dead snake in a tree.

I am afraid of snakes. I'm not afraid they are going to bite me and eat me, I am afraid they are going to wrap around me. Not like a boa constrictor wraps and squeezes, but like millfoil wraps around your wrists and ankles when you swim in a lake. I have unreasonable fears about snakes in the sewer- I never pee with the light off, and I always look in the toilet before I sit down. I know it's ridiculous and my fears are unfounded, but my phobia plays a big part in the way I do things outdoors. For instance, I would never wear flip flops in tall grass. A snake could get caught in there. I don't turn over rocks or logs. Some terrain just looks snakey and I avoid it.
In the back yard, I have seen a few snakes. Now that I am older, I don't scream and freak out. I just freeze and watch the snake. I can't take my eyes off the snake, because if it slithers away, I won't know where it is, and then it could sneak up on me and wrap around me. So, I usually yell, "Spencer, I NEED YOU" in a certain tone of voice that he interprets as "Bring a shovel".
He has the gross job of dispatching the serpents. I feel sorry for him, but I can't sleep knowing they are out there, reproducing. Putting them in the neighbor's yard is not good enough, they can come right back. And then they could slither under the house and come up through the heater vents.
You see, this is not a rational fear. I'm having some anxiety as I type this.

There probably is a logical explanation for how that snake got in that tree, but logic, when it comes to snakes, is lost on me. It appears to me that it was soft and wrappy when it got there. I know it didn't climb the tree. It's about 5 feet off the ground. The only explanation that makes any sense to me at all is that it rains snakes and crawfish in my back yard.