In which we have a snake
Ah, the joys of summer in the south! Yesterday I came outside to find a black snake curled up on the windowsill. His upper body was extended as if he were peeking in the window, which he very likely was. Now, this next statement will give my mother a quick stroke, but I don't actually mind snakes per se. What I mind is the uninvited snake, the unexpected snake.
For starters, when you don't expect to see one, there's that split second when you look at it and wonder what it IS. This one resembled that foam insulation you spray out of a can. Except black. And with a forked tongue. And the one I found under my stove a few years ago was mistaken for a power cord. With a mouse-sized lump in its belly.
And then there's the mad scramble while you run through the list of possibilities of how to handle the situation. First, always, is to alert my mother NOT to come outside. My mother is so phobic about them that for years we referred to them as "nakes" because dropping that first 's' made them seem less snakey. Anyway, the only thing worse than having a snake is having one that my mother is not prepared to see. So while my husband went to the garage to collect the appropriate snake-moving tools, I phoned her up and kept watch on the snake. (Rule #1 of snake-wrestling: Do not EVER take your eyes off of it. They're quick, they're silent, and they will be GONE if they get half a chance.)
Of course, my mother's first reaction is to pop up at the very window where the snake is hunkered down, phone in hand, peering out to see it. (The only thing stronger than my mother's fear of snakes is her curiosity. She would put a mongoose to shame, and I say that with deep affection.) Meanwhile, my husband has reappeared with two large plastic leaf rakes because it's very easy to move a snake if you don't mind hurting it, but difficult to do if you're trying to keep it happy and healthy.
I know some of you will be wondering why it was so important to keep the snake alive and simply relocate it when a shovel to the head would have taken care of the matter much more quickly. The fact is, black snakes do not share territory with rattlers and copperheads. If you have a nice, friendly black snake, it is eating up the mice and voles and moles and keeping the bigger, badder snakes off the property. We have an acre, at least a third of which is covered in ivy, so I am VERY happy to have a black snake instead of something worse loitering around, particularly with the pups. They're lovely dogs, really, but perhaps not the very brightest, and I have no doubt that the first time they see a snake the conversation will be, "Hey, this is a really cool stick! Wait, why is this stick hanging off my face?!"
So, black snake it is. My husband made a tidy little cage out of the two rakes and persuaded the snake he would be far happier in a nice patch of ivy away from the house while I texted our daughter's voice teacher that we were going to be a few minutes late to her lesson because we had a snake situation. It's better than "the dog ate my homework", right?
Comments
Lit, the Eastern Indigo
Though snakes did not bother me when I was young, when was older, it wasn't until I became a docent the Central Florida Zoo, and was at an "outreach" at a Sierra Club Event with our animals that we used in the education department to introduce the public to wildlife, that someone had to leave and handed me Lit, the Eastern Indigo snake that they were handling, that i very quickly got over fear of snakes and for years handled Lit. (short for Literary, as he got lost in a school's library and was finally found wrapped around a potted palm one morning and returned to the zoo) who was a genuinely gentle snake, being an Eastern Indigo, and here in Florida anyway, not allowed to be captured and kept as a pet, as they were on --not endangered, but the classification before that--which means they are about to become endangered--due to loss of habitat and having been captured too often and kept as pets--They are the longest non poisonous snakes in the United States as I recall and are distinguished from the black snake as they appears blue-black when their body is in the sun--I think they are generally thicker than black snakes and light on their underbellies--
But would definitely get a start if I walked out my front door and ran into one, and I have to admit that though I loved Lit, there was a nasty yellow corn snake--or rat snake--I think one and the same--that we had for awhile in the Education Department and I don't know why anyone would show him, because nine times out of ten, when anyone went to take him out of his habitat cage, he'd bite them--we had a red corn snake too, who only occasionally bit people--but I stayed with Lit and some times Monty Python--the ball python, and as I recall the corn snakes may have been transferred to the snake house--it's called something else but it escapes me now--I think Lit only died a couple of years ago, and this was back in the late 80s and early, 90s--
creatures
My very good friend is deathly afraid of spiders. We have to refer to them as creatures. We are both teachers and one day during our shared planning period I had to rescue her from a spider. It was tiny :) I told her that I loved her and "resuced" her. lol
BIG black snake
Many years ago my then-10-year-old son and I went to the Birmingham zoo. After strolling through the snake exhibit, we went outside to see a demonstration with a very large black Indigo snake. When the handler asked if anyone would like to pet it, my son piped up "you, Mom, you!".
Uh. Okay ... so I very slowly 'petted' the snake and was surprised to find it was neither slimy or dry ... it was like touching a pair of black patent leather shoes!
Then the handler asked for a volunteer to allow him to put the snake across their shoulders ...
Uh huh, me again.
I'm 5'2" and the snake was approx 5' long (longer than my arm span). So anyway, I stood there, arms outstretched, eyes squeezed shut, as the handler picked up the snake and carefully laid it from one fingertip, across my shoulders, to the other fingertip.
Yikes!
It was heavy and my arms bowed down a little, but it wasn't all that scary ... it was actually kinda cool. Then it moved ... and I could feel its muscle ripple all across my entire arm span (similar to a shoulder massage) - pretty awesome!
I really appreciate your gentle handling of the snake. To me, Snake Medicine is not only about transformation and beginning anew (shedding of their skin) ... it is also about Snakebite Medicine, or the ability to transmute that which would harm us (incest, physical abuse, etc) into that which makes us strong (think of how a poisonous snake bite is treated).
nake stories
A couple years ago I woke up in the middle of the night to the cat messing with something in the corner of my bedroom. It was a baby snake! Gah! After running around in circles freaking out for a minute, I grabbed the cat and locked him in the bathroom. Then I grabbed the biggest wacking utensil I could think of- a long handled cooking spoon. (Why I didn't grab something with a really long handle, like a broom or a mop, I'll never know. In my defense, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 3am, and I wasn't exactly thinking clearly.) Then I called the management company and demanded that they send someone RIGHT NOW to take care of my snake. There was a cop who lived on property and handled security, so they called him. I met him at the door with the phone in one hand and my spoon in the other. He just about choked himself trying not to laugh when, in all seriousness, I offered him my spoon to defend himself against my big, bad snake. (It was maybe a foot long and about as big around as a pencil.) He just reached out with his bare hand and grabbed it. After he left I flailed around for about 5 minutes doing the Ew, Ew, Ew! dance. I finally settled down and dozed again, but I was pretty worthless at work the next day. My boss took it easy on me though, because he was deathly afraid of snakes!
My little sister and I, age 7
My little sister and I, age 7 and 11, left our split level house one day in spring to go to school only to find that all the snakes that had been living and breeding in the shallowest part of our crawl space during the winter were now sunning themselves--and having sex--on our cement stairs and walk. Our sidewalk was almost black with them, a dreadful mass of curling and writhing.
Inadvertently, in my shock at seeing them, and in my effort to yank my little sister back behind me in the direction of the open door, she stepped on the tail of one, and in one horrible moment I will never forget, it lept up--probably shocked itself-- to wind itself around her bare leg.
She began to shriek in pure terror. So did my mother and I. frozen into inaction. Only moments were involved, but they seemed forever until my mother and I rushed towards her and dragged her towards the house, my mother flapping the morning newspaper at the snake until it fell onto the sidewalk. These were not poisonous snakes, but their number and general ickyness was such that my poor widowed mother had to phone someone--I don't know who--to get them removed, while we went off to school by the back yard route.
I have hated snakes ever since. However, when I was a camp counsellor in my late teens and early twenties, I managed to keep my fear under control when little kids dangled a garter snake in front of me. I even held one once, just to show the little brat I wasn't afraid. But I was.
toad-Toad -TOAD
How kind you were to move your visitor so gently. We just found a Cane Toad inside our house and moved him on much less gently. They are poisonous and ugly - what a nasty combination!
YOIKS!
I, too, don't fear snakes in theory. But confronted with my first garter snake, which reared up at me while I was relaxing in the grass, I SCREAMED. A garter! As harmless as they come! Oy.
Glad you got the situation in hand, lady.
My sister and I came home one
My sister and I came home one night and noticed that there were police at our doorstep. We were reallly confused. We got there only to find that my dad and grandma had found a snake and were terrified, so they called the police to come get rid of it. Granted, we live in Minnesota, so chances are the snake was harmless. I don't remember if they found the snake. It was pretty funny.
"The Unexpected Snake" should
"The Unexpected Snake" should be the title of your next work. 8 )
i'm with your mom
If I found a snake on my porch, I'd get ready to move out of my house :-)