Just when I'm starting to relax about the whole "SNAKE IN MY HOUSE!" drama I get another jumpstart to my morning. Dragging myself out of bed, 56.7% still asleep, my head-cold in full swing, I stumble into the bathroom with visions of a nice hot shower and a fervent hope that at some point in the process I'll start to feel better.
What I find, to my horror, is my cat, Tuck, hunched in the 'I'm going to attack and kill it' position beside the vanity cabinet. From the angle I'm approaching I can't see what he's looking at. Naturally the first thought in my sleep and cold fogged brain is ... "OH F&$@! The SNAKE!" I almost did the girly scream. I'm instantly awake, shivering, and ultra aware that I'm buck-naked and shoeless. Not good at 7:30 am if there is a snake in your house.
I'd finally started to relax a bit since the SNAKE IN MY HOUSE! adventure a couple of weeks ago. I've stopped jumping at shadows, stopped thinking about the little bastard slithering into my bed while I'm sleeping. I was making progress. I was even beginning to analyze WHY there was a snake in my house on a 'message from Spirit level'. After all, Snake is my totem. It's my power animal. It's the animal representing my time of birth in all cultures. It's my greatest phobia. I am Snake and Snake is me. The Divine Comedy/Tragedy of my entire life's story.
But let me back up and tell the first of the tale ...
A couple of weeks ago I started collecting boxes to hold all the stuff I was clearing out of my house for a yard sale I was planning with my friend Rena. I had a few of the boxes stacked beside the back door. One morning after I had come home from a short trip of doing errands in town I decided to get busy cleaning out one of my closets. I reached for the boxes beside the door. An odd movement beside the box caught my eye.
It took a couple of seconds to register that I was staring at a snake. Half second later it clicked in my brain 'King Snake', harmless, small one, IN MY HOUSE ... OH HOLY MOTHER OF ST. PETER!!! A SNAKE IN MY HOUSE!!!
I felt all the blood rush from my head to my toes. For some inexplicable reason I thought about the fact I was wearing flip-flops instead of solid shoes. I made some weird squeaking noise. I started backing away, trying not to faint, trying to remember to breathe.
I rounded the dinning room table and moved toward the kitchen. My mind going ninety miles and hour over anything and everything I might have in the house to catch the thing. Somewhere in that few seconds it crossed my mind I'd probably have to get close to it again to catch it. Standing there, shaking and on the verge of hyperventilating, I turned my head back toward the snake just in time to see the last five inches of its' tail disappearing in horrifying slow motion down into the heat/ac vent in the floor. I proceeded to have a nearly full-blown panic attack. Why I didn't faint there on the spot, I'll never know.
A snake, alive and loose, in my house. A nightmare turned real. I called my best bud, Sue. Sue knows how to kick snake ass. It was a glimmer of hope in a dizzy, heart-pounding ordeal. In two leaps I was on top of the living room chair, frantically dialing the phone, gasping for air and trying not to cry. "There's a snake in my house!", I squealed into the phone when Sue answered. I swear, I think she laughed.
I babbled the whole episode into the phone, my eyes glued to the vent, feet tucked up as far under me as I could get them. She says call Animal Control. This meant I had to get off the chair, cross the living room to get to the phone book. Though my eyes never left that vent, I managed to do it. She said she would call her son Chris and see what he suggested while I made the call to Animal Control.
I couldn't find the phone number so I ended up calling the Sheriff's Dept. to get it from them. Nice woman answered the phone, listened with sympathy to my slightly hysterical chattering, and told me she would call for me since no one worked at the A.C. on Saturday. She promised she would call back. While I waited on the chair, Sue called and said Chris recommended closing all but that one vent and turning on the A/C full blast. Snakes are cold-blooded and it would seek heat, meaning that hopefully the thing would crawl back out of the vent.
I can't begin to describe how hard it was for me to go around the house, reaching my hand toward those vents to close them. There are twelve vents. The thing could have made it to any one of the others. Eleven times I had to stand and scan the area around the vents before I could get near one. I think I had eleven mini panic attacks.
About this time my sister, Glenda, called to tell me she was on her way over to help me with the yard sale stuff as we had planned a couple of days earlier. Didn't take her but 1.3 seconds to realize from the sound of my voice I had a problem. "What's wrong?", she asks. "SNAKE in my HOUSE!", I whined into the phone. Like Sue, Glenda laughed. She said she would bring tape and we could tape the vents closed.
That sparked an idea. With it being summer here, I couldn't very well close those vents off indefinitely. I needed an alternative, and I had one.
The husband had recently completed a 'honey do' chore of replacing the screen on the front door. There was screen material left over. By the time Glenda got to my house I had cut pieces of screen to fit over the vents. She taped them in place with packing tape. The one vent the thing went down we left open, but covered with a box and netting to catch the thing if it came back out. Turned the A/C down as far as it would go. Waited for what seemed like eons. No snake. After a couple hours or so Glenda went home. Not going to accomplish much with the yard sale stuff with me freaked out over the snake.
All the rest of that day I was a nervous wreck. Anything I caught in my peripheral vision made me jump. Shadow on the floor, I jumped. I kept a hawk eye on the snake trap. I couldn't do much but wander around the house, fidgety and completely ill at ease. By nightfall, I was exhausted but still highly anxious. I wouldn't go into a room without turning on the light and scanning the floor for some slithering dark shape, anything out of the ordinary. I didn't sleep a wink for jumping at every noise. Kept the covers tucked around me like a burrito, visions of the thing crawling under the covers seeking warmth. For the first time in years I went to bed wearing pajamas.
At one point, around 3:30am, I heard what sounded like the cat whacking the cardboard of the box I had placed over the vent. I literally levitated off the bed in fright. All I could imagine was the snake had come up out of the vent. That Tuck, being curious of the scent of the snake, had knocked the box aside and let the thing loose in the house. I'm still not sure how I got my nerve up enough to go check to see what happened. Fortunately, the box was still just as I had left it. Didn't see Tuck anywhere. It was an awful, sleep deprived night.
The next morning I made a bee-line to check the box. Still no snake. And while I'm standing there contemplating the situation the thought crosses my mind that the packing tape Glenda had used might not hold up so well against the cold air flowing from the vents. It damn sure wouldn't stand up to a curious cat.
I needed Duck Tape.
I searched the house from top to bottom. No Duck Tape. I had to make a trip into town. A 20 mile round trip for a $3 roll of Duck Tape was well worth it. I was showered, dressed, gone and back with Duck Tape in hand within an hour. I took a minute, got into as close to a Zen place as I could, then started re-taping the screen over the vents. I couldn't let myself think about the thing possibly crawling up and out of a vent while I was taping it. I couldn't think about anything but taking my time and covering those vents as methodically and completely snake-proof as I was capable of. I even took away the snake trap and taped up the vent the thing went down. It was only after I had finished that I sat on the sofa and cried. Big ol' sobbing, from the gut crying. Fear, stress, no sleep. I was due for a good bout of boo-hooing.
Over the next few days I stayed on high alert. I wouldn't go into a dark room without turning on the light and scanning the floor as I did that very first night. I watched the floor as I walked even in the daylight hours. I dreaded opening a cabinet door or dresser drawer. I poked my shoes before I would put them on. I tried not to think about HOW it got into the house. I tried not to think about it being trapped in the ventilation system. I slept in pajamas.
I've gotten more at ease in the last week. I still scan the floor as I'm walking. Still turn a light on before I go into a room, but the pajamas are back in the dresser drawer.
Then this morning happened. Tuck in attack position in the bathroom. Me naked and barefoot. I'm sure God got a big laugh at me at 7:30am this morning. A foot long King Snake reducing me to a whimpering girly-girl. I didn't think it was very funny. It took a full ten deep breaths before I could peek around the corner of the vanity to see what Tuck was fixated on.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing there but air and carpet.
Furry little feline vermin with their totally bizarre behavior. And I swear he actually had the nerve to look up at me a grin.
So that's my morning. Hope yours started better.
Namaste, y'all ...
