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B is for Bask
When we bought our house in
Central Florida, the former home owner handed me a long, slender strip of wood
with a bent coat hanger hook stapled at one end.
He said, “This is your snake
stick. You’re going to need it.” With that, he and his lovely wife climbed into
their RV and roared off into the Florida sunset. The snake stick is designed to
humanely lift cold-blooded snakes off the handle of the garbage can—a handle
that a human might be about to grab with his/her bare, warm-blooded hand.
I didn’t even get a chance to thank
him for my new snake stick.
And I should have. Thanked him.
Black snakes patrol the foundation of our home like North Korean soldiers
looking for random American tourists or Christian hikers. They bask—to expose
oneself pleasantly to warmth—in the sun on my walkways. They drape—to fall or
hang in loose folds—themselves in the branches of my hedges. They shed—to fall
off—their skins among my sunflowers.
They make me wet—tinkling urine
out of fear—in my pants.
Not that I’m anti-snake. I’m
not. But dang, is there an animal on the face of the earth better at the
“gotcha game” than the cold-blooded snake? I think not.
How many snakes, you ask?
Approximately twelve dozen or one really busy one. I’m not sure.
What do they want, you may
wonder? Lizards.
Florida is awash with creepy,
crawly types, and I don’t just mean the massage parlor boys. Lizards dart,
whip, creep, flick, and crawl all over the screens of our porch. Our snakes
have developed an interesting lizard hunting technique. They slither along the base
of the porch and then leap straight up to pluck distracted lizards off the
porch screen. True story. I’ve seen it. Our snakes can leap—about as high as a
couple of chubby toddlers stacked one on top of another.
Snake stick? You bet. I carry
it with me when I stroll through the pasture or feed the chickens or breathe
fresh air. I worry that the snakes will mistake me for a porch screen covered
in lizards. It might not be a rational concern, but it is real.
Today, I smacked a lizard off
the back-porch screen, sending it flying into the yard. It hit the ground,
gained its feet, and blazed its way back to the safety of the porch screen. A
wily black snake gobbled the lizard up inches from safety, and now I’m going to
have to continue to feed the foundation snakes or they’ll break into the house
and punish us. I know it.
It’s not a rational worry, but
it is real.
Linda (Snake Skin) Zern
