Snakes in the bailiwick

My son was coming down the steps to the basement where I was watching Chief Inspector George Gently solve a murder when he (meaning my son, not George Gently, who would be unlikely to come down the stairs to my basement because (a) I don’t keep any dead bodies down there; (b) we’re outside his jurisdiction; and (c) he’s a fictional character)—now where was I? If I keep getting distracted I’ll never get to the issue at hand, or afoot, as the case may be.

So anyway: my son was coming down the steps when he stopped suddenly and said, “There’s a snake.”

And I am pleased to report that I did not run screaming from the room, because (a) I grew up with snakes in the house (confined to terrariums) and long ago lost that primal fear; (b) I’ve long suspected that we had snakes living in the crawl space, which opens to the furnace room, ever since we found a snakeskin above a damaged ceiling tile; and (c) a snake in the house means fewer mice I’ll have to contend with come winter.

And besides, in order to run screaming from the room, I would have had to run toward the snake—barefoot. (Meaning I was barefoot, although I suppose the snake was too.) I do confess, however, that I pulled my feet up onto the sofa. If the snake developed a sudden urge to watch George Gently grimace toward a suspect, I didn’t want him slithering over my feet. Or her, as the case may be.

Instead, I calmly started asking questions. “Where is it?”

“In the furnace room. Near the door.”

I pulled my feet up more securely.

“What does it look like?”

“About two feet long, skinny, with a stripe down its back.”

So a garter snake, probably, like the ones we see all the time out around the front porch. In fact just last week I tried to interest the dog in a garter snake that was crawling beneath her feet, but instead of looking where I was pointing, she licked my finger. This makes a certain kind of sense: after all, she’s more likely to receive a dog biscuit from my hand than from a garter snake.

“Now it’s moving,” he said. (Meaning my son, not the dog or the snake.) “It’s going back behind the furnace.”

Good place for it, if you ask me. Out of sight, out of mind, free to curl menacingly around the subconscious. Once inside the house, a snake could probably get into all kinds of interesting places, but a hungry snake is going to stick to the areas most likely to be frequented by mice and bugs and other vermin, like the creepy-crawly crawl space or the musty dusty furnace room. I don’t envision a garter snake rummaging around the silverware drawer or curling up on my computer keyboard. So as long as the snake stays where it belongs, I’m okay with it.

Then again, how will I know? It’s not exactly going to be gallivanting around the house carrying a flag reading “Don’t tread on me.” What if I should happen upon the snake while stumbling about barefoot on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night? Some screaming might occur. I could break a leg while trying to levitate off the snake. Or, worse, what if the snake were to startle my adorable grandkids? The trauma might put them off visiting for a long time to come.

I have lived with mice and I have lived with spiders the size of small puppies and once, years ago, we lived in a parsonage where hornets had built a nest that filled in the entire space beneath a kitchen cabinet (and when they all died of hornet spray and the nest started deteriorating, it smelled like a dead horse in the kitchen), but I don’t know how long I can go on living with a snake (or snakes!) in the furnace room. But how does one discourage snakes from invading? Do we invest in poison, traps, or a mongoose? Who ya gonna call?

Just don’t suggest Chief Inspector George Gently, because snakes are outside his bailiwick.