The One I Love

There was a snake in my garage this morning. A big black one with a white chin that looked something like this. I tried to pick it up, thinking it was a stray rope of Christmas lights and then it jerked into a coil and rattled, you know, like a rattlesnake, also known as The Kind That Can Bite You. And then I died. The end.

Well, not really. Actually, I screamed, ran around to the passenger side of the car, climbed over the seat to get into the driver’s seat (which was dangerously close to the giant reptile) and drove away, shutting the garage door behind me. God. I just left it there and ran away, trucking off to work like there wasn’t a giant snake in my garage and everything was fine! Totally fine! I see snakes in my garage all the time! When I came back a few hours later, it was gone. Where, you ask? Let’s hope far, far away.

Everyone I know has a different theory. One promptly announced that it was a water moccasin, and if I were smart, I would run home and evacuate and save the pets while I could before it came into the laundry room and swallowed us all whole. Another revealed the time a few weeks prior that a stray python made its way into her yard and strangled a few rats it had found beneath their deck. Yet another insisted that 90% of snakes here are non-poisonous, so I could have – and should have – gingerly picked it up with my bare hands and placed it lovingly in the kalanchoe whispering promises of a life of freedom. Final determination, by the way, is that it was a completely harmless black racer. Which, while horrible, is not the end of the world and won’t eat us whole, although that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t ever want to see it, ever, and may actually kill myself if I see it one more time.

Incidentally, I’ve been informed by Ad that I am on my own when it comes to snakes. Which means that if it does come back, I’ll be stuck beating the bag out of it with a stray garage broom solo, sans burly husband. However, given that he’s taken care of just about every other creature we’ve encountered in our long history together, from centipedes to mice to that awful time we thought a raccoon was on our deck, he’s more than earned his keep. Or so I keep telling myself. Although this is the same person who kept telling me not to move the Amazon box in the garage because we had a frog living in there and he wanted him to have a happy home. Last week, a closer look in the box revealed that it was actually a dead frog, thus ending any dreams he had of a pet amphibian named Stanley who ate bugs and hopped off happily into the sunset.

We leave tomorrow for a delightful holiday with family. As usual, I’m dreading the flight, but when all is said and done, there will be eggnog! Christmas Eve! My family!

I will be back sometime next week to answer more of your questions, but in the meantime, have a very happy holiday, whatever you celebrate. And if you don’t celebrate anything, have a wonderful weekend.

(A snake! IN MY GARAGE! A freaking SNAKE!)

*REM

21 comments December 21st, 2006