There aren’t many things that shock me any more.

I reared three sons while my wife was away working hard, stamping out diseases and delivering babies. Being boys, they got into things that are best left undiscussed. Even by people like us who make a habit of talking about things no one else will even contemplate.

Trust me. You do not want to hear the possum story. I mean, once we get to the bit where I’m reaching my hand inside just to get out the– No. Never mind. I don’t want to remember that part.

Anyway. My point is, I can take almost anything. Take it so much in stride that you’d think I was strolling naked (Is he going to keep talking about that forever?) down the promenade secure in the knowledge that the finest tailors in the land had clothed my kingly body in robes of the most astonishing quality.

I don’t startle, is what I’m saying. Well, that’s not quite true. There are some things that will startle me. There are even less things that will make me straighten up, drop a laundry basket full of clean clothes onto the floor and sprint towards the back door, yelling.

Hearing my middle son, a recent college graduate, shout at me from the upstairs family room, “Holy crap, Dad! There’s a huge snake up here!” is definitely one of them.

What Happened Next. . . 

I dropped the laundry basket full of clean clothes onto the floor and sprinted towards the back door, yelling to my son, “Don’t touch it! I’ll be right there.”

If I’d been smart, I’d have kept on running down the steps, across the driveway, into my car and just driven away, secure in the knowledge that I’d have to stop sometime. Instead, I went outside, grabbed a seven-foot length of stout bamboo that I keep for just such an emergency (as far as you know it’s true) and raced upstairs to the room we so quaintly call the Creature Cave. The boys are our creatures. The room is the cave in which they congregate and destroy armies and civilizations.

Although, apparently, the sighting of a real snake was a bit much for these killers of digital zombie hordes, these destroyers of worlds. Honestly, when I went running up the steps, picking up the laundry basket as I went, I still thought my son had . . . exaggerated things. Just a tad.

“Holy carp, Zippy The Graduate Boy. There’s a huge snake up here.”

My son, perched on the seat of the couch and keeping a very sharp eye on the unmoving snake, quickly looked away from the snake and glared words at me before turning back to the reptile. The words glared at me were indecipherable, but probably went something along the lines of, “Geez, Pater. What is your damage?”

You Want A List Of The Damages?

I saw something twitch out of the corner of my eye. I saw my son levitate to the back of the couch out of the other corner of my other eye and immediately wished I had some chameleon in me because that hurt. I decided to follow the less amusing movement and turned to see the snake s-ing slowly over the carpeted floor.

Moving quickly, with the decisive firmness that already landed me several guest slots at the local Emergency Room, I lowered the lanudry basket to the floor, open end toward the snake and began poking at the slithering being, gently guiding it to the laundry basket.

It wasn’t all that hard, really. The snake seemed almost eager to be away from the gibbering young man making with the motions. I’ve a feeling the snake was equally as eager to get away from the slower-moving hairless ape with the long stick that kept poking at it.

This, I thought, was not going to be a problem. Certainly not like the last time I’d mixed it up with a snake of unknown provenance. My stick wobbled a bit when my body shuddered at the memory. The black snake paused and flicked its forked tongue into the air, perhaps tasting the memory of fear sliming from my pores.

I shook my head, clearing room for more rational thoughts, banishing the memory of that snake, the one that caused such a ruckus and led to me claiming a spot in a Charlotte emergency room in the midst of all the shouting and whatnot.

 

Of course, this was different. It had to be different. I’d learned a thing or two since the last snake. This time I’d thought ahead. I’d brought my laundry basket. My long bamboo pole and my towel. That last bit was the most important.

A Towel Is A Massively Useful Thing To Have Whilst Hitchhiking…And Snake Wrangling

As soon as the snake was inside the laundry basket, I gently tilted it upright and covered the opening with the towel. Problem solved. Snake on the inside, me on the outside and not a single fang in sight.

Turning back to my son, I motioned him to come down off the ceiling and, yes, off the back of the couch. I moved toward the door and the stairs, which ended just before the door to the outside and the back yard.

“Come on, son,” I said. “Let’s let this confused beast loose and back into its natural habitat. Maybe we’ll get really lucky and it’ll grow big and strong and drive the local squirrel population to extinction.”*

“But, Dad. . .”

“Come along, son,” I said. “It’s perfectly safe. I’ve got the snake in the laundry basket and a towel over the top. What could go wrong?”

Yes.

I really said those words out loud. You’d think being a media-savvy consumer of pop culture media, I’d have known better. I did not.

“But what if the snake slithers out of one of the many, many holes in the mesh laundry basket?”

I kept moving down the stairs, my brain mulling over his last sentence. Something about that was ringing a distant bell. Something about plastic laundry baskets and holes and suchlike. I admit it. He had me puzzled.

Straightening my arms, I lifted the towel-covered laundry basket up higher and found the snake staring at me, the tip of his forked tongue flickering millimeters from the end of my nose.

Oh.

Those holes

I opened my mouth to make a cogent comment on the inadvisability of attempting to move snakes of unknown etiology in a laundry basket constructed like a giant plastic sieve, but what came out was, “glub? Glarm? BlaaaaaaaaAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!”

Next: Instantaneous Translation Fail

 

 

*I have a justifiable hatred of all things squirrly. There is a reason for this. They all should be destroyed as painfully as possible.