B is for Bask

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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