The One I Love
December 21st, 2006
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
Entry Filed under: Nuttin'
21 Comments Add your own
1. Beth | December 22nd, 2006 at 5:07 am
Don’t hate me, but I’m inappropriately laughing at the image of you unwittingly picking up a snake, while thinking it was a string of Christmas lights. (And just what kind of Christmas lights do you have, woman??) Mostly I’m laughing because I’m so freaking glad it didn’t happen to me. ;^) Happy serpentine holidays!
2. Claire | December 22nd, 2006 at 6:43 am
OH MY GOD, JONNA. I don’t happen to have a problem with snakes, but that does not mean i would be happy to see one in my garage. OH MY GOD. I am terribly proud of you for not passing out right there on the garage floor, and i would have screamed like a little girl and ran away, too. I don’t think anyone could blame you for that. However, i think it would freak me right the fuck out to know that it still lurked somewhere in my garage, or crawled through some hole in the wall to another part of the house. But lets not think about that, eh?
Gah!
Well, don’t think about it and have a Merry Christmas!! Snake-free, of course.
3. TwoBusy | December 22nd, 2006 at 7:14 am
You realize, of course, that the entire time you’re away the snake will be waiting for you… silently… patiently… vengefully… the hunger in his unblinking reptilian eyes growing with each slow beat of his cold heart…
Happy holidays!
4. jonniker | December 22nd, 2006 at 7:31 am
Update! The snake was in the garage this morning again! AGAIN. I tried to beat it with a broom and then club it with a shovel but alas: Snakey lives. He slithered underneath our stockpile of hurricane shutters, and there I imagine he’ll stay until tonight, when he comes out again to feed.
He kept BITING THE BROOM while I was attacking him with it. Rattling and biting the broom! MY GOD. (He’s not poisonous, but still. BITING. THE. BROOM.)
5. Nancy | December 22nd, 2006 at 8:07 am
I don’t know about this new revelation. I am beginning to think of Florida much as I do the wilds of Brazil — beautiful, wonderful to visit, but beware, fair maiden, danger lurks underfoot with the beasties and buggies and the oh-god-what-the-hell-is-that. Frogs and snakes and crocodiles (ok, you haven’t actually mentioned the last ones, but I read, dude, I read), oh boy!
I think you should move back to Boston. Rats and cockroaches are unpleasant city bedfellows, but at least they know their turf.
6. Lawyerish | December 22nd, 2006 at 8:13 am
The….uh, kalanchoe?
SNAKE! IN YOUR GARAGE! AAAAAH!
I would have to move. Immediately.
Merry Christmas, doll!
7. metalia | December 22nd, 2006 at 8:44 am
“In an ordinary looking garage, somewhere in Florida, evil lurks within. Coming soon to a multiplex near you…Snakes in A Garage.”
Tell Samuel Jackson to get his ass down there and hep you out!
(Yes, I know the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon is long past, but I seriously couldn’t resist. That is INSANE. You poor thing!)
Merry Christmas!
8. Beth | December 22nd, 2006 at 9:14 am
I would have been unable to go to work that day because (a) I would’ve peed myself, and I just would’ve been unable to face the second shower and dressing, and (b) Snake in Garage would be enough to make me call in sick with worry.
This is further proof that God hates Florida. Frogs, now snakes. This is ridiculous.
9. Heather B. | December 22nd, 2006 at 9:55 am
Question: why didn’t you leave the garage door open and with the broom/shovel or whatever, get it out of your garage that way?
(forgive me for trying to be obvious, because I probably would have screamed and stepped on it)
10. lizgwiz | December 22nd, 2006 at 10:02 am
I have actually picked up small snakes and taken them to safety (and once got peed on for my trouble), but they were always timid little things. I’ve never had one try to attack–that would freak out even me! Yikes.
11. Andrea | December 22nd, 2006 at 10:16 am
I think I would have done exactly what you did if I found a snake in my garage. But we have dogs in there too (we built a dog run under my husband’s work bench so the dogs have a warm, dry place to go when it rains or gets cold. So I’d be worried about the dogs.
Is there a number to a humane society or some other animal type people who can come over with their specialist equipment (a Y shaped stick that will pin the head of the snake to the floor while they grab its neck and then put it into a pillow case and tie the top) and get rid of it for you? That would be my move, and if Adam wofks from home, all he’d have to do is let the snake expert people in. Good luck.
And happy holidays! Hope your flight is uneventful and the egg nog is strong.
12. Melissa | December 22nd, 2006 at 4:16 pm
There are only 3 poisonous snakes native to America. The Rattlesnake, the water moccoson/cottonmouth and the one that looks like a king snake (remember, red and yellow kill a fellow, red and black venom lack).
13. Carolyn J. | December 22nd, 2006 at 7:56 pm
Ladies and Gentlemen – THAT is why I live in a freezer six months of the year. Ain’t no snake in my garage! *points*
Oh, and about that particular snake: I told him to drop by and check out the paint stains. Sorry about that.
14. Catherine | December 23rd, 2006 at 9:30 am
A black racer tried to crawl down my shirt a few months ago. I am not snake phobic, but they do bite (though they aren’t poisonous, they are nervous and can strike out of fear). Fortunately I was able to move away from it without scaring it, because I really didn’t want to have to explain that bite in the ER.
15. jonniker | December 23rd, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Heather: I tried! i tried! Well, the second day that’s what I tried. The first day, I was simply too panicked. And the second day was when he bit the broom and ran under the hurricane shutters where I couldn’t reach him. He knows and loves our garage now, I guess. Lots of frogs.
Little bastard.
16. dissed | December 23rd, 2006 at 4:30 pm
Jonna. This is not difficult.
(a) Open garage door.
(b) Find snake.
(c) Use broom to “encourage” said snake to Hit The Freaking Road while keeping out of striking range.
There. *dusts hands*
Of course, I kinda like them.
17. Samantha | December 24th, 2006 at 10:06 am
I just happened to click on your link from Kristin’s site (D+D) today and found this post. I screamed inside for you and once for me too. I hate snakes, bugs, spiders… anything creepy crawly, really. We had a mouse *once* in my apartment and I freaked out, and we just about moved out that night. I dont deal well with that stuff. Yick.
Good luck with your … extermination?
Happy Holidays!
18. -R- | December 26th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
I agree with Lawyerish. Moving is your only option.
19. Em | December 27th, 2006 at 9:00 am
My boss lost TWO dogs to a water moccasin!! Those bastards mean serious serioud bi’ness!! Be careful.
20. Jen W. | December 27th, 2006 at 9:37 am
I guess you’d have to check and see what kind of snake it was before you went all-a-wrangling it…but here’s my problem with people who tell you to “just pick it up- it’s not poisonous.”
THE MOTHERF’ERS MIGHT STILL BITE YOU. WITH FANGS.
Poisonous or not, I, too, would never get near one of those slippery bastards.
21. jes | January 2nd, 2007 at 3:06 pm
You should know that I have been gone a very long time, or at least sort of long, and that I am having quite a time going through all my reads. Do you know I have more than 2,000 entries to be read in my BlogLines feeder, and that I am choosing YOU above them all? Well, yes. I am. And you must know that I have something to say about snakes.
This one is most definitely a water moccasin, also known as a cottonmouth (as foretold by its: COTTON. MOUTH.), and that is MOST definitely poisonous, and usually very aggressive, so you should be thankful that you got away unscathed.
(and melissa: the rhyme you quoted belongs to the coral snake.)
Yuck. Snakes.
Oh! And more information for you: poisonous snakes have vertically elliptical pupils (cat’s eyes). Just an FYI, if you ever get close enough to look.
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