While Snakes on a Plane are infinitely more interesting than snakes in your garage both kinds inspire terror nonetheless. To be honest I thought the seemingly distant screams were from kids playing with fireworks down the block. Instead they were from my wife who stumbled upon a two foot snake smack dab in the middle of our garage. Although my wife is pretty tough and rarely scared of anything even Supergirl has her weakness and its not Kryptonite…it’s a slobering, slithering snake.
Snakes don’t bother me much (unless they have rattles, hoods or can spit poison in your eyes) so I ran into the garage and grabbed the snake. For some reason (?) my wife thought I was going to chase her around with this relatively mellow reptile. Come on baby, this is your husband. Would I do something like that? Believe it or not I restrained myself.
We took a few pictures, drove in the rain to the most “jungley” territory we could find and released “Charlie 2” into the quasi-wild. I named him that because when I was a small kid in inner city Denver (thirty years ago) I had a little snake named Charlie that escaped it’s holding tank and found sanctuary somewhere in our little apartment. My mom and I frantically searched all over the house only to find it curled up behind a milk bottle.
Ma made me release Charlie in the heart of the city. He has probably grown to be twenty feet long and two hundred pounds in the last three decades, feasting on small pets and rats. He is likely living in some murky sewer, plotting his revenge on his former owner who let him loose in the hood. Maybe he joined a gang (The Cobras? The Pythons?)
Sorry Charlie. Today I live in the suburbs. You’d have to slither a long way to wrap your coils around me now.
As for Charlie 2, I guess I’ll start worrying in thirty years.
Sssssssee you later Alligator (different blog, different state)
