Saturday Night Snake

This has surely been a day, I swear. First the mirrors at SteinMart this afternoon, and then a snake (a snake!) in the bathroom ceiling fixture this evening. And how did I notice the snake up in the fixture? That was easy--- I was sitting in the bathtub, taking a nice relaxing bubble-bath before I put on my new pajamas so I could enjoy the rest of the night with a book. I don't know what made me look up at the ceiling light....

Needless to say, I never got out of a tub so quickly in my life. The snake was curled up, and I could see him clearly, and he wasn't moving, so I figured he was either asleep or dead. (I was hoping for dead, but I knew I wouldn't be getting close enough to find out.) I'm not talking about a python-sized snake..... it was just a green garden snake, about twelve inches long. But in my book, a snake is a snake, and I don't care how little or how big it is-- I'm not going near it. (It doesn't matter how long we've lived here... I'm still a city-girl at heart.)

My husband wasn't home (he's at a business conference), so my Knight-in-Shining Armor solution wasn't going to work. I got dressed and went outside to see which one of my neighbors were home. Wouldn't you know it... most of the houses were dark. Was everyone asleep? It wasn't that late?! I called one neighbor whose lights were on, but their answering machine picked up so I left a message..... I didn't mention the little problem here, but just asked them to call me back.

I went through my address book.... looking to see whose husband I could call to come over here and get the snake out of the light fixture. And how did it get up there in the first damn place?! While I was paging through my friends' phone numbers, I heard my across-the-street neighbors come home. I knew she had company because I heard more than one car door slamming shut. I called ML up and asked if anyone was there who wasn't afraid of snakes. ML's daughter said she'd be here in two seconds-- and she came with her little boy (who kept saying "WOW!" whenever any of us said the word snake), and her older sister and her little boy (who cried at the snake word), and their snake-hunting men came with them, along with ML.

The parade coming across the street at 9:45 tonight was the highlight of the day, said ML's youngest daughter. (I could tell she hadn't been to the fun-house of mirrors at SteinMart this afternoon.)

I would've bet that one of ML's sons-in-law would have gotten up on the stool to get a closer look at the snake, but it was her daughter who ended up poking her fingers against the light fixture to see if the snake was sleeping or dead up there. Two pokes, three pokes... the snake didn't move. R took the shade down (we could all see the snake curled up right through the beaded shade) and pronounced the snake to be "good and crispy." She held the shade down so I could see it, but I turned my head away and told her to just flush it down the commode. When her little boy heard that, he quickly said "Wooooooooowwwwwww!" and then he watched as it swirled around in the flushing water. Then he showed me his new Astros shirt that he had recently got from his first time going to an Astros game. I said Wow! but because of the snake-thing, my heart wasn't in it.

Of course, after the snake was flushed, we all stood there wondering how the snake got up there in the first place. And there's one dog and three cats in this house-- you would think that one of them would've caught that snake as soon as it came into the house, for goodness sake. ML's daughter R thought the snake might have slithered in from the air-conditioning vent that's close to that light fixture. But how did it get up in the attic? And does this dead snake have live brothers and sisters still up in our attic? (R's little boy excitedly said "Woooooowwww!!!!!" to that possibility.)

Well, wow is not exactly what I'm thinking about this little adventure. At least my heart-beat has slowed down some in the past hour. My blood pressure is normally on the low side, but tonight's drama gave it a little boost, I'm sure. I had to wait till my hands stopped shaking so I could type. And I knew that if I didn't type this all out, I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight.

So here I sit, in my brand-new pajamas that passed the SteinMart mirror-test, and the first thing I did after I put them on was cover them up with a long bathrobe and go outside to see which of my neighbors could come over here and get a snake out of a light fixture for me.

My husband misses all this fun when he has to make a presentation at a conference.