89-year-old Tallahassee 'Grandma Bunny' battles 6-foot snake after it eats visiting birds

An 89-year-old Tallahassee woman, distraught by a snake targeting her beloved backyard birds and squirrels, took matters into her own hands, killing the 6-foot-long serpent with a hammer to its head.

Garlene Eiceman had been noticing birds were missing from one of her feeders and that no other birds were returning. She initially thought there was something wrong with the feed she was using, but after a visit to a pet stores, she learned the feed was fine.

About three weeks ago, Eiceman looked on in horror when she saw a snake slither out of a bird box where she'd been watching a nest of three baby blue birds be tended by their parents.

The snake's throat had a tell-tale bulge.

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"I started crying, I didn’t know what to do," said Eiceman, a great-grandmother of six and a grandmother of six, who goes by the nickname Grandma Bunny. "The snake went down and up a wooden flower box and it went out of sight. After that all the birds disappeared.”

She removed all the places a snake could hide, including all the bird houses. Eventually she spotted the snake. As soon as she did she ran and grabbed a hammer and a twig.

“He would go thin and wiggle out from under the twig, I would run after him and finally I turned my hammer sideways and I got him good,” she said. "I was so angry with that snake."

The birds and squirrels are beginning to return to her garden and Eiceman hopes she's killed her last reptile.

"I do not want to go through that any more," she said. "Watching those birds brought a lot of joy to me.”

Contact MarKeith Cromartie at MCromartie@Tallahassee.com or follow on Twitter @MCromartieTD