Snakery (cont’d), or Here in Eden

I saw it—the tail end disappearing up into the crack where the porch ceiling meets the wall. Now Creepy was in the house, in the void space above our downstairs bedroom. I scurried into the room and made noises and threw my husband’s slipper at the ceiling. Fat chance of that helping any.

Next came the day of the loud encounter, when Local Grandboy Age 12 was here. Our dog was rooting at the small wood pile on the porch, not noisily, but then Grandboy and I took heed. Finally we saw it—or anyhow, a snake. It slid into the dark corner and coiled.

Buster wouldn’t let up. He kept hounding and hounding, until—oh! We scrammed.

 

By then, Grandboy’s mother was here and he had to depart on other business. Later I sent her a message for him and a still from my video. See that shooting-out tongue (or whatever that is)? After I took Buster in the house he started up his barking again and there was the snake’s head at the door glass, peeking through at him. Then when I let Buster out of the house he went around to the porch and barked at the cord to the fan. I was picking up the cord, I guess,when he sprung at it viciously and bit it, leaving marks.

Some mornings after, out on the porch, my husband mumbled something about the floorboards’ spatters like bird droppings. “That mess,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “I saw.” This happens sometimes—birds make nests up behind the 2x8 header. They potty unapologetically down onto the porch. But now? A nest in summer?

I ran my eyes along the header’s top edge. I caught sight of a lump. A hint of smudge-black body, detoured around an obstructing rafter.

My husband seized the broom. At his poke, the snake wrapped itself around and around the handle. It dropped onto the clothesline and he let the thing dangle like evil in front of us. He advanced it through the yard and the bordering glade, using the broom. He sent it flipping and flopping even farther. “It won’t come back,” he said. Ha.

 

When Pittsburgh Grandboy Age 11 and his chum came and slept for some nights on the porch, I kept my mouth shut. One night Local Grandboy joined, too. I’d not told him about the upside-down acrobatics, what swung so near to where his feet curled. He had a thick sleeping bag. The boys fell unharmed into slumber, and in the morning, rain splattering the undergrowth, all seemed well.

 

We still have upstairs in our lending library a book my husband devoured years ago, by Daniel Everett, Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes. My husband pondered on it hard—the primitivity of an Amazonian tribe, and Everett’s departure from religion. I’m thinking now I want to read it myself. Around are always snakes. Wherein they lie is always a question.