Adjusting to serpents in the house

In an earlier blog, I told the tale of my famous laundry pile, calling it a good clean mess. There has to be a dark side to that laundry pile story. The word “clean” was in there a few too many times, very suspicious-looking if you ask me. Methinks she doth protest too much!

For starters, there was a snake at the bottom of the celebrated laundry pile. In a rare cleaning frenzy one winter before dawn, I got to the bottom of the pile, lifted up the last towel, and there he was. He was a sleepy young thing, looking up at me, surprised and unwilling to move, as was I. I wondered fleetingly if I could escape into a state of suspended animation from which I might never emerge. We stared at each other for a good minute. I knew, as my life flashed in front of my eyes, that he, a child snake, could not be the only one. I also feared, with a glimmer of dead-certain clairvoyance that all of my children sleeping upstairs could be surrounded by walls filled with snakes, and needed my protection immediately. And last but not least, I felt the presence of the mother snake, an eight foot long monster who could be above my head at that moment, ready to drop from the heating pipes overhead and slither into my bathrobe.

I lived through it. None of my worst fears came true, it doesn't work like that. I got the snake out and it’s true there were others through the years. One time a dyed-in-the-wool city boy was here in the sticks for dinner when a snake crossed along the dining room wall. Each member of my family, tainted by my phobia, clambered noisily onto their chairs at the dining room table, while the city boy, who had been sent to nature camp in his formative years, caught the monster, wrapped it fondly around his wrist, and took it outside without a fuss.

It’s horribly true, too, that these were not garden variety snakes, but black snakes that could grow to be quite large. Naturally I called in experts and did my research. My son and sons-in-law have come to the rescue more than once. A brave neighbor lady came over to get one from under the dryer, and without even asking how big it was, just reached in and got it. My neighbors divulged stories of seven foot snake skins found in their attics. The years went by.

No big snakeskins here. I know the mother of all snakes is in here somewhere, but my snake is tidy and keeps her private parts private. In fact she keeps her whole self hidden. She's demure and helpful. I have no mice. When I jump on my Soloflex Whole Body Vibration machine in the mornings, I sometimes even imagine her down in the lower chambers of the house loving the vibe that is trembling through everything. I imagine that she is old now and past her reproductive years, that her gentleman suitor no longer calls in the spring, that my Soloflex might sterilize her just in case, that she stays under the house in a far away corner and exudes a radar that draws the mice to her, so she never has to go anywhere. I called the state wildlife agencies back in the phobic days, and learned that snakes are territorial and there’s only one big one per house. Some cheery fellow there said most people don't ever know that they have a snake. That’s the good news from the dark side.