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.