So! I have had a bunch of snake encounters today, my friends. I mowed the grass this morning, using the gas-powered mower because I wanted that noisy pollution-spewing two-stroke motor to tell the snakes to get the heck out of my way. Which they did, thankfully. I only spotted one, slithering away into the tiger lilies, but I suspect he was not the only one I startled.
(My neighbor is so fed up with all these snakes, you guys. We were chatting outside the other night while she let her pet turtle wander around the yard. She told me that she will run after them with the lawnmower if she spots them while she's cutting the grass. I have to laugh when I picture this 60-year-old lady with a fearsome light in her eyes, veering around her yard at top speed to chase down a 12-inch garter snake.)
I went outside to do some weeding later, and I was pretty jumpy. I heard but did not see the sage plant snake, and then I had three separate sightings of the snake I keep spotting in the lambs' ears. I started to call him "the snake that lives in the lambs' ears," but I am sorry to tell you that he does not actually live in the lambs' ears. No-- apparently he lives in the foundation. OF MY HOUSE.
Pete and I were picking up dinner (takeout tonight, in celebration of his successful completion of three AP exams -- go, Pete!) when I said, "Oh, look, there he is." We watched him slither up the wall, assuming he was confused, and then -- AND THEN -- we watched him slither INTO the wall. There is a small hole in the mortar beneath one of the bricks. You would never, you guys, but NEVER look at that small hole and say to yourself, "Well, that looks like a four-alarm situation right there." But somehow -- SOMEHOW -- there is enough of a tunnel in there that an ENTIRE GARTER SNAKE can fit himself inside it.
I gasped. Pete was also taken aback. We got in the car and drove to get the food. "What if he tunnels all the way through into the basement?" he asked as I pulled into a parking spot at the restaurant. "LALALALALAAAA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!" I said, so loudly that he jumped.
But of course, much of my brain was occupied with the same question: what if he tunnels (or HAS TUNNELED) all the way through into the basement?
Calm and methodical person that I am, I set to work immediately making a list of possible responses. Here are all the ideas I had:
- Burn the house to the ground and flee, never to return.
I think the insurance company will understand, don't you?
We were coming back home and Pete said, "So now we have snakes inside our house?!"
"No," I said very emphatically, "we do not. They're not inside the actual walls of our house."
"Mom," Pete replied, "that one is literally inside the actual wall of our house."
I mean, what can a person say to that? I can't think of anything, except, "Nice knowing you, Gladlyville friends; we're moving to Ireland."
P.S. I can call a mason on Monday about the mortar; I can rake out some of the dead leaves in the lambs' ears so there's less cover; everything looks intact from inside the basement. I know I have options. It's just that I also have the shudders. AND CAN YOU BLAME ME?
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