- December 26, 2024
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It was on a lovely afternoon last Sunday when I saw snowflakes drifting on the breeze outside my living room window.
Snowflakes!
“Honey, where did I put my snow pants?” I hollered across the house as I fished through boxes in my closet. “Come on, kids! Who’s got a carrot nose and a corn cob pipe?!”
Then it occurred to me: A cold front? At this time of year?
I stopped outside and sure enough, there was no snow. Then I heard a sound like a machine gun. Or maybe a woodpecker?
But the sound was coming from inside the air-conditioning unit, and as I approached it, I saw something black being spun around by the blade. Suddenly, the sound stopped, and in the corner of the unit, under the grate but free from the spinning blade, was a pile of black snake guts. The “snowflakes” had actually been scales, I realized.
I felt proud that I had protected my family from this poisonous intruder. I brought my 5-year-old son, Grant, outside on my shoulders to show him the marvels of evolution in action: I, with a brain far more developed than this humble reptile’s brain, had the wisdom to buy a house with an enormous snake trap attached.
In my revelry, I neglected the corpse.
The next day after work, I got home and was struck by an odd smell of decay wafting through the living room. I brought this up to my wife, hoping she would be willing to admit to having dropped a rotten piece of steak behind the refrigerator, or spilled a glass of curdled milk on the couch — anything but you know what.
Dutifully, I turned off the air conditioner. I went outside with a screwdriver and came face to face with the non-slitherer. He or she was cooperative. It only took a few pries to pull the corpse through the grate.
If the devil ever had a line of Slim Jims, this is what they would look like, all mangled and stiff from being in the sun for the past 24 hours. I triumphantly put the snake on the driveway to scare away his or her friends, and I went inside.
At work the next day, I showed pictures to my colleagues and was told that this was not much of a threat to my family, after all. It was a harmless black racer. It wasn’t poisonous but was actually helpful in keeping rodents away. It made me think of the garter snake that my sister and I used to chase around our house as kids. We considered it our pet and called him Sneaky.
The night of this discovery, I tossed and turned to the thump-thump of the snake’s beating heart under the floorboards. I went into the garage and found a rake from our bag of beach toys and stood over the black crown of thorns on the driveway. I plucked it up with the red plastic tines and walked barefoot toward the woods behind my house.
This was better: It wouldn’t be much of a burial, but at least the body wouldn’t be on my driveway — that wasn’t a respectful way to treat a snake that wasn’t hurting anyone.
But then, it slipped, and the snake fell into the grass. It was pitch black outside, and I couldn’t find it, so I started swiping at the grass, as though I were trying to find my keys. Finally, I felt the rake strike the body and send it flying unceremoniously into the top of a magnolia tree at the edge of my property.
Well.
That will have to do. It’s been nice knowing you, Sneaky.
