Imagine me sitting peacefully in my dining room, checking off completed tasks on my long Saturday list. Imagine a gasp from the living room. I know Stella very well; I can tell one gasp from another. "Is it a bug?" I ask calmly.
She sputters. "It's a-- no, it's a SNAKE."
"Oh," says Marie, from beside her on the couch, "look at that."
Imagine a snake in my living room. A SNAKE. In my LIVING ROOM. Imagine me climbing anxiously onto a dining room chair while Elwood investigates. This is the same position I assumed when we watched Jurassic Park together recently. I do not like reptiles in my living room -- that's a big no-thank-you from me.
The snake disappears under the CD shelf, which is bolted to the wall.
"That was a very small snake. I'm having some thoughts that maybe I shouldn't say out loud," says Pete. "Like a nest in our house?" I say. He nods. I die a little inside, and think comforting thoughts of accelerants and arson. Could I move to snake-free Ireland without a job lined up, do you figure?
Other people return to their normal Saturday activities, a choice I find utterly baffling. There is A SNAKE, AN ACTUAL SNAKE in our LIVING ROOM. I text my friends. "INSIDE?" says one. "A pet?" asks another. (A pet. As if! It's like she doesn't even know me.) "Girl, get the holy water," says a third.
The internet says a broom will help to push him outside, but he is stubbornly invisible under the CD rack. Is he hiding between the baseboard and the wall? Am I going to have to burn down this whole damned house and not just the living room? We leave the broom propped against the wall, and after a bit he slips out of his hidey-hole to curl up behind it. Unfortunately, I make such loud wordless noises when I see him that he retreats again.
(Maybe, in hindsight, a solution would have been to play a recording of those "Jamie sees a snake in her living room" noises on a loop. They certainly appeared to be an effective snake repellent in the moment.)
Soon he slithers over to the furnace duct (THE HORROR THE HORROR, NO REPTILES IN THE DUCTWORK PLEASE), where Elwood prods him with the broom until he coils himself around the stereo rack. Elwood grabs him with salad tongs and drops him on the porch, ENTIRELY too close to the front door. "Please," I say, "please grab him with the tongs again and throw him into the crabby neighbor's yard." (This is maybe not my finest moment.) Elwood throws him off the porch and into the herb garden. I would have preferred it if Elwood had thrown him into Saskatchewan, but okay. There's no holy water in the house but you can be sure that I go immediately to fetch my stash of blessed salt and sprinkle it everywhere.
But do you know what Pete says next? DO YOU KNOW?? He says, "I'm not sure that was the same snake we saw before."
I can't even proofread this post because it makes me hyperventilate. Any typos represent Jamie preserving the remnants of her wobbly sanity.
Recent Comments