Close Encounters

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

So I’m climbing up my loft stairs last Monday. I forget what I was going for. I forget because I pretty much lost my mind when I saw, at eye level to the loft floor, what looked like a ribbon.
“Is that a ribbon?” my still intact mind quarried, knowing quite well it was not a ribbon. You know how it is. You see someone in a place you never saw them before— like your High School Geometry teacher at the Iron Man festival; you’re like fist bump; you’re like, “Hey! Hi! puzzled look, and then 12 hours later around 2AM you finally figure out why you know him.

But I digress. I thought” ribbon” because the last thing I expected to see on my bedroom floor was a snake.

I squinted at him. He squinted at me.

“ Holy Mother of God” I breathed. ( I’m not Irish. I don’t know where that came from. It took the place of a scream.)

I think he squeaked. Maybe not. Maybe that was my scream clawing its way out.

The mind, at such moments, speeds up production. Item: it’s a month old baby snake, 14 inches long, if it’s a rattlesnake I’m doomed to concede the house to it and Holy Mother of God HOW MANY MORE ARE THERE?

He starts to slide sideways away from me, possibly just as rattled ( haha, no I made that up much, much later) by the smell of panic rolling off me in pungent waves, as I was by his — existence. Two feet from my bed.

Mind still in overdrive (“ think think think think think”) I backed down the stairs, ran outside, grabbed a bucket and a brick, and headed back up to do battle. My main concern was to not let that lethal little sucker go hide somewhere. I saw with my newly animated super power vision that he had scooted behind the trash can in a dark corner. I stopped to consider.

Now, my mind had finally slowed down to “ leopard at two o’clock” speed, and I realized it might be a gopher snake. But I couldn’t see him well enough to tell. I turned on my cell phone flashlight ( so grateful , finally, that it’s surgically attached to my hand), and tried to look at his head and tail. Impossible to tell. So I unloaded the brick on him.

Twice.

Despite my attempts to assassinate him, he fled and made it all the way along the wall to a small hole. And slithered in.

I promptly got some steel wool and stuffed it in the hole with a yardstick. Taking no chances here. Then poked it in more firmly with a pencil. Then sprayed the whole clump with ammonia.

Staggering out of the ammonia filled loft, I of course consulted the internet for “ how to remove a snake living in the wall two feet from your bed and blankets, clothing, shoes, plastic bin of favorite purses, water glass ( oh my god, was he drinking out of my water glass!!!!) etc etc. Getting nowhere ( “ call the fire department”. Let’s just stop here a moment and have a little laugh at that. What were they going to do? Tear down the wall?) I finally got a hold of myself and determined that I needed more research on telling baby rattlers from baby gopher snakes. It took a few deep dives but I finally saw an entry that noted a gopher snake has a round pupil, a rattler a slit eye. Leaving nothing to chance, I typed in “ are gopher pupils ALWAYS round? “. Same for rattlers.

Apparently, that’s a yes.

And judging by the good look I got at my baby snake’s eye, he was a gopher.

And I had just trapped him in my wall. Like those religious freaks donated by their parents in the Middle Ages to be walled up in a church as brides of Christ.

Of course, I could untrap him. But… what if I hadn’t seen him just right? What if I was mistaken? Should I risk letting him out? Would you? I thought not. I slept downstairs. Which begot the question, how did it get upstairs?

For two days I agonized. I felt terrible. I like gopher snakes. They kill gophers and I really really have no need for gophers. I have been known to attack them with a shovel, to be honest, so you could say I hate them. Ok. Passionately. I hadn’t had a gopher snake in my yard for years. Probably had something to do with numerous rodent killing dogs always cruising, rarely catching, often releasing. That’s another side road.

However!!! My guilty thoughts were to be short lived, as on afternoon of the second day spent speculating on how thirsty he was, how hot in the wall, where his mother was, where his siblings were, how did he get in, checking for egress around the house, would he smell if, when, he finally succumbed, how horrible a person was I, etc etc ad nauseam,— on the second day of being a total case, I was sitting downstairs when I saw my cat, Loki, jump up from the back of the recliner across the room and fly into the bookshelf. A little bomb went off in my brain. It couldn’t be. Eyeing the cat’s flicking tale and laser focus on the books on the shelf, I approached the bookshelf and saw — of course, a snake. THE snake, since he had a dent three quarters of the way down his body. I sighed. Checked out his tail( to a point. No stub), his head (not arrow shaped) and his round pupil staring at me with what looked like absolute horror. Well. I deserved that. I got gloves, daintily plucked him from the shelf, and took him outside far from the house and where the dogs roamed.

I know if he sticks around, I’ll always know him when I see him. I named him Gimpy.