My wife loves plants. This means our front porch looks like a jungle. It also means that just like Mother Nature, she has to clear out the dead wood from time to time.
A plant in a wicker basket high up along one side of our front door had been overlooked during her watering routine and was dead or dying. She reached up to remove the plant from its basket and suddenly snatched her hand back.
My wife discovered we had a new tenant subletting room on our porch. It was a snake.
Called to investigate, I identified it as a harmless corn snake, or chicken snake if you prefer, but you cannot imagine the furor and excitement it generated among my two younger kids. Each of them was lifted up in turn, leaning cautiously backward and half-clinging to my head, to spy on the legless visitor.
The excitement lasted all of a few minutes. My kids ran off to play with their cousin and I was left to evict our unwanted guest.
I bore this snake no grudge, and was well aware of their usefulness in keeping the vermin population down (a job our cat only bothers with when it feels so inclined), but he was most definitely not going to be doing his job from a basket hanging at roughly the height of my head beside our front door.
Not having any great fear of snakes, I went to grab him behind the head and soon discovered how fast he was. He decided to abandon the plant and hide in the bottom of the large basket itself.
Unfortunately, in addition to discovering how quick he was, scaring the snake out of the plant and into the basket revealed to me just how long he was as well. He had not looked it while curled up about the roots of the plant (my wife could tell you what it was, but they are all just plants to me), but this guy was three feet long.
It wasn’t huge, of course. My literary hero, Conan the Barbarian, regularly fought and killed snakes a hundred times bigger than this one. I could handle this, right?
Watching the snake mock strike at me, I decided it was time to change tactics. Not having Conan’s broadsword handy, and not really intending the poor creature any harm, I settled on the claw-like “picker-upper” used to spare my back when getting sticks or trash off the ground.
The long handle made it an awkward tool to go fishing around in the basket. I was soon hoisting Mr. Snake out of his hidey hole. Unfortunately, the soft plastic cups at the tips of the claw were too soft. The snake wriggled free and fell to the ground as I moved him to a more manageable height.
Helpfully guided by my wife (from the safety of the other side of the window), I soon found him lurking on the other side of the porch. Now the kid gloves, or rather the plastic tips, were off. I had removed the cushioning material from the claws, leaving two metal nubs with a lot more gripping power.
This time Mr. Snake was got. He wasn’t happy about it either. These were not mock strikes he was aiming at me now, but with full fledged bites.
I was just about to release him into the field next to our house when my wife came rushing outside with one of her many glass jars. “Wait!” she cried, “Let’s keep him for a bit. The kids might want to see how big he is now that he’s not in the plant. Then you can let it go.”
I sighed. It seemed the snake I had been struggling to evict would stay our guest for just a little longer.
•Greg O’Driscoll is a staff writer for The Blackshear Times.
