My Snake Story

I think I might have told my snake story here before, but I couldn’t find it. Anyway here it is again.

This happened about fifteen years ago. We were asked to take care of a friend’s cats and we were on our way to feed them. As I drove along something kept catching my eye near the driver’s window. Finally I turned to really look and there coming up out of the seatbelt well was a snake. It was out about three inches and as I looked at it our noses weren’t more than four inches apart.

Now of course any normal, sane person would have immediately driven the car into a ditch, leaped out, and run screaming down the street, and while I really wanted to do that I couldn’t because the kids were in the car with me. Instead I stayed very calm. I told Mollie to unbuckle and move to the other side of the seat and buckle up there. We were only about five houses away from our destination and I floored it. I was telling LJ that when we got there I wanted him to get out quickly and leave his door opened.

When we stopped we all bailed out – me leaving through LJ’s door. It was only after we were out that I told the kids about the snake. We headed in the house to call Nick, no cell phones then. Unfortunately he was on the Internet – anyone remember the old phone modems – and so the phone was busy. I called another couple in the neighbor who were good friends. They came, but the husband made it clear he would have nothing to do with the snake. In fact as he arrived he probably had the best solution. His suggestion was to slap a ‘For Sale, as is’ sign on the car and never get in it again.

Soon I got up with Nick who came with work gloves a bent coat hanger and some type of grabbers.  We could see the snake, but couldn’t get it out. We needed to get the car home and Nick offered to drive it, but I said I could if LJ would ride with me to tell me if the snake was coming out again. He reluctantly agreed.

We gave him the work gloves in case he could grab it. As we hurried home LJ said with full actor drama in his voice, “It’s coming out!” I asked if it was far enough out for him to grab it and he quickly replied, “Oh, no.”

Finally I pulled into a parking lot and got the gloves from the boy and tried to grab in myself but it when back down in the seat belt well. I just wanted to get home and evidently the snake wanted to watch. It was out about six inches and I was driving from near the center of the car when I finally pulled into our drive.

Throwing it in park I turned to look again at the snake and taking a deep breath grabbed it right behind its head and yelled for LJ to go get Nick. Together we pulled it out. It was about a four foot black snake. I turned it over to Nick and he let it go in the woods behind our house.

It was quite an adventure.  We eventually found that Nick was to blame. He had taken the back seat out of the van when he went on a golf weekend. It had rained here at home and we think the snake crawled up into the coils under the seat as it sat on the carport. We had put the seat back in the car earlier that day. Now I’m no snake fan, but at least it was a black snake. Had it been a poisonous one I wouldn’t have been as quick to grab it.

So that’s my snake-handling story. Of course Nick and LJ did do a little snake handling in church one Sunday. No, we don’t go to one of those churches, but a little green snake got in the education building one Sunday and when one of the ladies saw it she screamed for Nick to grab it. When he did LJ wanted to help carry it out, he was about four.

Hopefully that will be the end of our snake stories.