Snake's Alive! It's a Jungle . . . in Here!

Before there was Keith, the eliminator of hornets and wrangler of reptiles, there was an old, orange shovel and a man willing to country-song save me.

My house doubles as an office and, apparently, as a jungle.

One morning I paced from room to room talking target audiences, messaging and media mix on a call with a client. As I passed through the den, my son’s rubber snake – oddly hanging out in the back corner beneath the cabinets – snared my attention. Well, I thought it was a fake until it so slowly and so silently slid its onyx head up the wall and tongue-zapped a lone spider from a web I hadn’t noticed until that flash kill. So much for Issa’s haiku, “Don’t worry, spiders, I keep house casually.”  I stared at the serpent hunting along the baseboard.  I continued my conversation, or at least tried to, but my brain kept flipping to this reptile stretched across the floor. Finally, I confessed my dilemma, “Kelly, I hate to do this, but I need to call you back.  There is a snake in my den.”

She shouted, “WHAT?  Oh, my God!  That means something, Syd!  That’s symbolic. A sign. Go! Go! Get it out of your house!”

I didn’t know what it meant. But it couldn’t be good. I didn’t know how it got there. Or if it was alone. I did know I wanted it out. O-U-T, out!  I surveyed my sleek visitor, particularly the shape of his head. Deciding he was a rat snake or a racer – in either case more helpful than harmful – I strategized on how I might return him to his wilderness.  When I was about eight, my brother taught me how to handle his pet slitherer, Sammy. It had been about three decades since I had done this, and that was a positively identified grass snake, in an aquarium, a very controlled situation, not a maybe-it’s-harmless-maybe-it’ll-end-me nuisance on the loose in my house. Breathe in. Breathe out.

I envisioned that I could lift the snake by its head, zip to the back door, and fling him gently into the brush and mulch down the side of the yard; but there was something about his position, just beneath the cabinets, his seeming awareness of me without looking at me, the flicker of his forked tongue and his distinct markings that caused me to reconsider a bare-hand removal. 

I began reformulating my plan . . . and wishing I hadn’t donated those rusted fireplace tools.

I couldn’t lose my visual. What if he disappeared into a vent or a cabinet or under a chair? Would I wake up to strangulation by a snakeskin choker?  I decided that I could dart to the mudroom, grab two brooms and a cooler within about ten seconds.  In my mind, I would chopstick the snake, drop it into said cooler, take it outside and release it.  Clearly, I had watched too many episodes of Python Hunters and River Monsters with my kids because that all seemed exceptionally logical, very doable, even normal. Anyone could do this, right?

I snagged my equipment without losing the snake.  I placed an Igloo cooler next to him, but to my dismay, realized the lid would not stay open on its own. I wedged a sofa pillow into the hinges.  I strode quietly over to where the racer lingered under the lip of the cabinets. My heart was cartoon-beating out of my chest. Holding a brush of a broom in each hand, I firmly, but ever-so-tenderly, caught its body with the broomsticks.  I swung toward the cooler, accidentally whacked the pillow, and the snake wiggled out and thudded to the floor. Those Townes Van Zandt Snake Song lyrics You can’t hold me / I’m too slippery played mockingly in my head just as that now biting-mad wriggler’s hiss-strike-hiss-strike-coil-hiss combo sent me six steps back and up onto the couch.

I no longer believed it was harmless.  And, now, needing to feel a bit less alone in battle, I called to my trusty watchdog.  I could see Blue laid out lazily on the floor two rooms over.  Blue didn’t so much as lift his head.  I called again. Nothing.  Shit. This snake bit my dog.  No, this snake killed my dog.  My Mama Bear instincts fired up, as did my rabid imagination, which until then I had kept mostly contained.  Mostly. The snake, still coiled and hissing at me, had taken on pit viper-like proportions, and now I aimed to kill it.

 

The phone rang.  It was my husband breezily checking in at noon.  I cut through our usual hey-how’s-your-day-fine-and-yours pleasantries and asked with a hint of urgency, “Any chance you could come home now? I’m not asking what you’re thinking. There is a snake in our den, and I tried to catch him, but I’ve pissed him off. I mean, really pissed him off. I can’t get Bluedog to respond to me.  I want to kill the snake, but I can’t leave . . .”

“HOW THE HELL DID THE SNAKE GET INTO THE HOUSE, SYD?” my husband boomed in before I could finish.

“Well, I don’t know, maybe a vent, maybe the back door; the kids always leave the doors open. Maybe I dragged him in that rolled-up rug that I’d aired out earlier. I don’t know how it got in.” I swallowed, and something that tasted like pride slid down my throat. “I need help. I can’t leave it because I don’t want to lose it. And Blue’s either being worthless or dead on the living room floor.” I further detailed my failed catch.

“Alright, Syd. Please, don’t do anything else to that snake. I am headed home. I mean it; leave it alone until I get there.”

I thanked him, sort of, but firmly instructed, “When you do get here, bring me that orange shovel.  I think it’s leaning against the house.  JP, don’t come in here without that shovel.”

Time passed. Or maybe it didn’t pass; maybe it just sat there, still, like my dog who hadn’t budged, like that hissing snake. I, on the other hand, standing on the sofa, was anything but still. Scanning the bookshelves for potential weapons, my mind churned and sparked Wile E. Coyote-newfangled ideas about taking out this malingerer. Finally, I heard Jonathan’s car, and I watched as my husband headed for the artillery. When he walked in, neither of us even said hello, but rather at the same time, he asked, “Where is it?” (about the snake), and I demanded, “Where is it?” (about the shovel).

My husband, who loathes snakes, I mean, doesn’t even like to see the pythons behind the glass in pet stores, eyed the twist of darkness on the floor and then eyed the mad-swirl of a wife on the sofa.  And probably thought for a minute to run the fuck for the hills. “I’m not giving you the shovel, Syd,” he said, rightfully reading my body and assuming in my now murderous rage I might put a hole in the floor when I brained the menace. I also suspected he didn’t want to finish the tale he would later tell his buddies over beers, “My wife killed the snake. I just came home to bring her a shovel.”

Instead my cowboy in khakis ambled to the back of the room, floorboards creaking under his leather lace-ups, sunlight slanting through the blinds. Jonathan swallowed hard and gave me that are-you-sure- about-this look that I sometimes see in my son. I wasn’t really sure. Even after comparing hundreds of pictures on my iPhone to this scaled, live loiterer, I couldn’t identify it definitively as good or bad, but I nodded to my husband. I just said, trying to channel some of that Under Armour commercial bravado, for both of us, “We must protect this house.”   

That much I was sure of. Dead sure.