Yesterday morning I was in the middle of the usual late-for-mass scramble when my husband came up to me holding a plastic bag.
him: how long has this been on the stairway?
[we have a tiny house, but a large landing on our stairs, so sometimes things without a place linger there]
me: I don't know, a while?
him: but how long exactly?
me: (thinking this is a bad time to be picking on my housekeeping skills) Maybe a month? Why?
him: cause there was a snakeskin on it.
me: *zzzzzrghSPLAT* (the sound of MY BRAIN EXPLODING IN HORROR)
A bit more deduction established that the stairway had been recently cleaned, and it was very unlikely that a snakeskin had been hanging out, unnoticed, on the stairway. Which meant that a snake had recently moved in and was somewhere in the house.
Then we had to leave for mass. (We made it before the second reading this week! Yay!)
On our way home we discussed the strategy for the great snake hunt of 2013, which would involve coordinating baby removal with furniture displacement, etc. My husband ran upstairs to change, and after a minute I heard a funny "urp" sound and then-- "FOUND IT!" The snake was hanging out by my husband's dresser.
"Great!" I shouted, "need any help?" and by this time I had grabbed one baby under each arm and was already outside and halfway to the car. It's the thought that counts.
Fortunately my husband keeps a machete close to hand (this is the tropics) and a few loud whacks later had dispensed the snake. It was a common grass variety, about 2 feet long, and non poisonous we are pretty sure (because I can't even look at pictures of snakes, so I've never been able to look it up and confirm that).
But here is the really disturbing part. We don't know how the snake got into the house, but let's say it took the easy way and came in one of the doors. It then had to climb up 5 open-tread stairs to the landing, and 6 more stairs to our upstairs. This means that NO WHERE is safe from snakes.
I shall now move to Ireland.
No comments:
Post a Comment