Skip to main content

An Unwelcome Guest

After a hard day on the job, I was ready to crash in front of the TV and watch a ballgame until it was time to go to bed. The Braves were playing the Padres that evening, and they had the lead, so I reclined my chair and laid the remote beside me on the floor. My very pregnant wife was over on the couch, trying to find a comfortable position to sit in, because her back was hurting. Tom Glavine was on the mound, and he was on fire! The Padres' bats were too slow for his fastball, and way too fast for his change-up.

I noticed my wife kept looking up at this ficus tree we had at the end of the couch, but I didn't think anything of it. Meanwhile, Glavine sat another one down and the Braves had Chipper up to bat. First pitch was low and outside. The next thing I knew, my wife had jumped up and was standing on the couch.

"I'm leaving you!" she cried.

God Almighty, I thought, What now?

"I'm leaving you if you don't get this snake out of our house!" She pointed at the tree, gagging, like she was about to throw up.

I turned to the TV, and sighed. I got up to look in the tree, pulling the fake branches apart. "There's no snake in here," I said, just before it poked his head out at me. The big black snake's tongue about touched my nose when it flicked it out.

I reached up and grabbed hold of the snake's tail and tried to pull it out of the tree, but it was no use. All six feet of it was wrapped around the fake tree trunk and most of the branches. I did manage to pull the tree out of the pot, as well as scatter moss from the base all over our living room floor.

My wife was losing her mind over in the kitchen, near the back door. When I finally got the snake unwrapped, it gave me the slip and slithered behind the couch.

After turning the couch over in the living room floor, the snake ran toward the kitchen, much to my wife's surprise. Luckily, I got a hand on it as it was side-winding across the linoleum.

"How did that thing get in the tree?" she asked.

"Probably in the moss," I said, "He's probably been in there the whole time.

Our entire house smelled like a skunk where the black snake had musked me as I struggled with it. Using my elbow, I opened the storm door and took the intruder outside. I turned it loose in the edge of the field, and as I walked back toward the house, my wife was on the porch, throwing the ficus tree over the rail into the front yard.

I have to hand it to the company that makes those trees; they are realistic. It fooled the snake, anyways.

As for my Braves, they won 11-1.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Point Through Time

Occasionally, the Earth will give up some of her secrets. If one should be so lucky as to stumble across one of those secrets, it can have a lasting impact on how that individual sees himself, and the world around him. History is not just the past, but our past. On my way to a hunting stand one morning, my headlamp caught a glint of white, protruding from the red clay on the bank that I was crossing. I laid my recurve bow on the ground and took great care digging the point out of the mud, then wiped it off on my shirt tail. The serrated edge was as sharp as the day it was made, long before Europeans set foot in North America. Over the years, I have found several points, each unique, bearing the mark of the one who made it. The smaller ones being bird-points, or true arrowheads, the larger were no doubt spear points, used with an atlatl, a device used to hurl the spear at game, or enemy in time of war. They turn up in field edges after heavy rains, or on old logging roads. Sometimes
Post a Comment
Read more

River Walk

Through clear water you see the first leaves of early fall lying scattered on the smooth river stones on the bottom. The slick rock reflect glints of sunlight in the shallows. Everything takes on the hues of russet and amber and somewhere in there are flecks of gold and flashes of silver swirling in the eddies and riffles, gliding down into the deep pockets along steep banks rife with ferns and alder trees and jewelweed. As far as you can see up the river, trees form a canopy over the water, all bending toward the other side, all lacing their branches together to form a tunnel for an occasional cool breeze to flow through, loosening dead leaves and pieces of dried branches that fall into the current and end up gathering around your legs as you make your way upstream. A river birch growing right on the bank is canted over at an angle across your path, it's root ball pulling out of the soil and rock near the water. At the base of this tree, the river has deposited fallen limbs and
2 comments
Read more

A Kindred Spirit

That morning, I paddled the cove, searching around fallen timber and boat docks for bass. The first one I hung into pulled my kayak around like a bathtub toy, even though he was no more than two pounds. I took a good look at the fish, then flipped him back into the tangled mass of brush that I'd pulled him out of. When I paddled back out away from the bank, I saw a man in a red kayak, working the shoreline toward me, although his only fishing rod was upright in the rod holder, and his hands were prodding the rocks, as if he was searching for something. I just watched him, wondering what he was looking for, and then when he pulled up a wad of mono with a Carolina rig attached to it, I knew he was a treasure hunter. He looked to be around 70-- slender and tall with a white goatee and ponytail, earrings and tattoos, a stubby pipe puffing smoke as he paddled on around the bend to find another jewel. When he looked up, I threw up my hand. He took the pipe from his teeth and said, &quo
Post a Comment
Read more