Normal people turn to their mates and say, “Does this look like a bug bite to you?” I turn to my husband and say, “What do you think? Snake bite?”

I know, I know. That’s the sort of thing you’d think wouldn’t be in question. You expect to be pretty darn sure if you’ve been attacked by a reptile house escapee. But follow me on this one.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went on our usual desert mountain run. Prime snake country. Rattlers are the most serious, but there are plenty of other more benign things slithering around, too. We were on the rockiest most remote section of our usual route when SOMETHING smacked into my shin. It felt like being snapped with a rubber band, and my first thought was “SNAKE!” But when I came to a stop, which took a few steps, and inspected – i.e. rubbed vigorously – my leg, I didn’t see anything overly concerning. Blood wasn’t gushing from anywhere. Nothing was turning unnatural colors. And other than the initial impact, there was no lasting pain. So off I went thinking, “Silly me. There was no snake. Probably a twig. La de da…”

Once home, I got in the shower where I noticed (insert Jaws music here) two very precise puncture wounds, one right next to the other. “SNAKE!”

I went bounding out into the living room, flinging almond-scented body wash and deep conditioner in all directions, and threw my leg up into my husband’s lap.

“SNAKE!” I pointed to the wounds.

He looked at my Dracula-esque spots for 0.064 seconds and, with great authority, pronounced, “Not a snake bite.”

I looked at them again. They still looked darn fang-like to me. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said. “Snakes can only strike at a distance of 85% their body length. Judging from the distance between the wounds, we know the animal would’ve been too small to strike that far up your shin.”

He sounded like the guy reading off the teleprompter on the Discovery Channel. It might have been convincing if 1) I didn’t have two holes in my leg and 2) I didn’t know that he was prone to making stuff up for his own amusement.

I took my leg back and stared at him squinty-eyed through my haze of dripping conditioner. “It was a really athletic snake.”

“Was not.”

“Could’ve been.”

“No.”

I kept an eye on my puncture wounds of mysterious origin, which didn’t, I’m happy to say, sprout boils or turn black or do anything else that might indicate imminent death and an urgent need to confess a few sins.

But I still say it could’ve been a snake. A really small, really jumpy snake. A snake on Red Bull. It could happen.