It's been a weird week in the house of smthng...

Saturday, I decide to run out to Rob's place to help him put his Victory back together.  He decided to replace the main drive gear to change the cruising RPM.  That was about a year ago. ;)  Anyway, he got that done and we got most of the exhaust back on.  We had to get everything torqued down correctly, fire it up and finish bolting the rest of his "bits" back on to get the thing back in running shape.  The exhaust and brackets and everything pretty much went without any problems, other than having to run to Tractor Supply to get some new bolts.  Once that was done, we decided to see if it fired up. 

He hadn't had it on a battery tender, so my hopes weren't great.  We had to jump start it from his car, but it did turn over.  We tried four or five times before it finally fired, but it wouldn't stay running due to the deadish battery.  We finally just ran it for a few seconds while it was on the jumper cables. 

At some point, we cranked it up and snake jumped off the bike onto the floor at my feet!  I didn't have enough time to see what kind of snake it was, as Rob and I pretty much both just bolted.  Unfortunately, that gave said snake enough time to just climb right back up the rear tire into the bike innards. :S

We pulled the bike out to the driveway and started hunting.  We finally found him behind the swingarm on the tranny side.  Rob decided to do some "prodding" with a stick, but all that did was relocate the thing under the new drive gear that he'd spent a year or so getting done.  There's no way to pull the cover off the drive gear without pulling the entire exhaust again, so that was pretty much out.

We did some thinking (hah!) and finally came up with trying to smoke the snake out.  Rob keeps bees, so he fired up a bee smoker and stuck it under the drive gear.  After about an hour or so, the snake finally decided to relocate (getting his tail caught under the drive belt probably had smthng to do with it). 

Anyway...  we finally got him off the bike, but he was messed up enough that he wouldn't have lasted very long, so Rob, uh... "took care" of it.

It was about 2 and half feet long, give or take.  While we were relatively convinced it was a copperhead or diamondback or smthng like that, in all reality, it was probably just a red rat snake that hadn't gotten his stripes yet. 

Needless to say, we didn't get a whole lot more work done on the Victory. ;)