True Snake Stories

I had a contractor over recently. He had some time after doing a repair here in the mobile home park I own in Stephenville, TX. Our schedules rarely leave us time to speak for more than a short period as I settle the bill. But in the colder months, before the first big freeze hits and everybody finds all those exposed pipes they missed while winterizing, there's a lull in his business and we have time to get to know each other.

Gary regaled me with a story about him and his wife Kim. It seems he had purchased his first home shortly after getting married. He paid a whopping $7,500 for it and it was in need of some tender loving care. He had removed and old attached porch roof and hadn't gotten around to repairing the house siding where the support beams had been attached to the house.

One evening he was laying in a tiny bedroom which would eventually become part of their living room. He was sort of napping. Drifting in and out of sleep while his wife sat nearby. Suddenly, a snake came into the room It had probably gotten in through that unrepaired spot in the siding. Gary gaped at it as Kim's scream scared it behind some furniture.

Being a county boy he could tell which snakes he couldn't handle. He peered around the furniture without moving from his perch, curious to see just what kind of snake it was. Relieved to find it was a common bull snake, he grabbed a handy broom and swept it out a nearby door.

He laughed as he came back into the room, but Kim did not seem amused by having a snake in her house. He told me that it took a lot of convincing to get her to stay in that old run-down shack. She hadn't been too pleased about living in a fixer-upper in the first place. They raised two children in that house.

I recall that my dad told a story of another young couple and some garden snakes shortly after getting married to mom. My mom had never been exposed to country living and was unaware of which snake varieties were harmless and which were dangerous. She had lived in New Orleans on St. Ann Street where roaches were the most ferocious wild life. To mom, all snakes were bad snakes.

Adapting to the Michigan country side was not always an easy thing to do, but she loved my dad and knew that the opportunities for a new nurse were better there than in new Orleans. For a while there they lived with my dad's dad. My grandfather once asked my dad why "she" kept putting the butter in the fridge. In New Orleans, it would melt if you left it out all day. In Michigan it would get just soft enough to spread. If you kept in the refrigerator, it was usually hard as a rock.

One winter my dad had an inspiration. When he tells this part of the story you can almost see the sarcasm dripping form his mouth. The house he and my mom lived in was a raised home on piers. The space between the piers was open and it was not uncommon for a cats and dogs to play under the house.

In the winter, it was an attractive place for vermin or varmints. I'm also a city boy and I am uncertain the correct terminology, but my mobile home is also on piers and I have problems with skunks, opossums, and cats looking to live under my home in the cooler months.

So, dad was inspired the day he figured out that a few bails of hay would fix some potential problems. The hay was solid enough to block the cold drafts that blew under the house and ran up the heating costs and they would block the animals looking for a warm place during a cold winter. Well, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

By filling the spaces with hay, he was inviting a few creatures that found hay an enjoyable place to live and lay eggs. Among those animals was the common garden snake, a cute little guy who would normally fall prey to the big cats that always seem to live near rural homes. The same cats which dad had gotten prohibited from getting under the house.

After receiving several calls at work that winter from my hysterical mother who was trapped in her car on more than one occasion by "huge green snakes," my father saw the error of his ways and removed the hay. He spent a lot of time that winter chasing snakes away that my mother thankfully never saw.