Despite the fact that our household has a resident snake, whom I’ve come to love and adore, one of my worst nightmares is snakes anywhere I don’t expect them to be. This includes, above all other locales, my BED. I can’t even watch those snake shows on Animal Planet when I’m in bed because suddenly my skin starts crawling and I’m convinced that there is something under the covers. Irrational? Possibly.
Unfortunately for eldest child, he unwittingly allowed my worst nightmare to come true this evening.
Professor Snape, as she is lovingly called, lives in a very nice tank in my bedroom. This might seem to not make any sense given that I don’t like slithering creatures near my bed, but I’d rather know where she IS instead of knowing where she ISN’T. To my fucked up brain, this does indeed make sense, so go with it. Anywho, our scaly mistress was looking, shall we say ‘peckish’ several hours ago, so I instructed eldest child to pick a sacrificial lamb from the mouse tank and feed her, while also refreshing her water dish and scooping the poo.
For those that don’t have a snake and are blessidly oblivious to the procedure, general wisdom dictates that the snake be moved to a separate feeding box so that they don’t associate hands in their cage with food. Our feeding box of choice is a large rubbermaid container with a lid, so that I don’t have to watch the whole affair. Sometimes, however, the children have a yearning to watch nature take it’s course, so they’ll place the box on my bed with the lid off. Given that things become rather uneventful and boring after the mouse has stopped struggling, the boys go back to whatever they were doing…and I usually remember to remind them to place the snake back in her tank. I have forgotten in the past, but it hasn’t been an issue because the snake wasn’t long enough to climb out of the box.
She is now.
You see where this is going, don’t you? About 20 minutes ago, I tossed the brats in bed, got in my jammies and climbed into bed with the laptop to await this evening’s episode of Lost. The feeding box was on my bed, so I picked it up and placed it on the floor. It still didn’t register in my head that I had forgotten something. Bedtime attire consists of flannel lounge pants and an oversized sweatshirt this evening, so I was well and truly snuggled up and comfortable on my bed with my usual mountain of pillows.
I was settled in for an hour of blog reading, when I felt a strange and cool sensation at my waistband. I absentmindedly tucked the covers in around my side, thinking it was a draft. It was then that I noticed that the draft had substance. I pulled open the covers thinking the kids had left a toy in the bed…and grabbed whatever the hell it was.
I don’t think I would have screamed like a little girl if what I was grabbing hadn’t grabbed back. It was Snape’s ass-end and, god love her, she didn’t bite or flinch at all when I pulled her out of my shirt. She had been out of her cage and away from her heat source for so long that she was cold and clammy and just wanted a nice warm place to sleep with a belly full of mouse. She’s now asleep in her heated rock cave.
I’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight if anyone needs me.
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