Let's get this straight right up front...I HATE SNAKES! Don't even attempt to reason with me, insisting that there are some "good snakes" (what an oxymoron...) out there, because I am having NONE OF IT! Even the mention of the word conjures up a mental picture and in turn causes the hair to raise on the back of my neck and chills to run down my spine. Had my biology professor insisted that I dissect the snake in lab, I suppose I would not have graduated college, due to the lack of 1 credit. You understand now...I SERIOUSLY HATE SNAKES.
Being a "snake hater" hails from my childhood days. When I was 3 years old, my family moved from the city to the country. During those formative years, I had many encounters with snakes; NONE of which were good. Give me spiders, raccoons, opossums or armadillos any old day...just NO SNAKES PLEASE! There were several incidents most likely that caused this snake phobia of mine. One such incident I remember, was when I was quite young. I was playing, going from the kitchen to the patio. Turning to go back inside again, I noticed a snake stretched out across the length of the sliding glass door. Jumping over it and back inside the house, I began to SCREAM! Mother came running to see what the problem was. By the time she arrived on the scene, the snake had slithered into the house. Putting me on a chair, she instructed me to watch it while she ran to retrieve a weapon to kill it. I called myself watching it, however, when she returned...the snake was nowhere to be found. Mother called the exterminators, while I decided that I would NEVER leave the safety of that chair. They came and searched our house from top to bottom, even looking inside chairs and taking the mattresses off of the beds. That snake had simply disappeared. They told us that it probably had just found its way out again...this was NOT comforting to me; I wanted to see the evidence that the snake was no longer in the house. Therefore, for a very long time (years...), I looked around corners and under the bed covers at night...just to make sure that the snake was not there.
A couple of years ago, I had yet another "snake incident" that had me shaking in my boots again. I returned home one afternoon to find a note on my kitchen counter, left by my housekeeper. This was not unusual since she often did this to tell me when I was out of cleaning supplies. What WAS unusual, however, was the P.S. at the bottom of the note: "There is a little snake in your living room". WHAT?! OH MY GOSH!!! I physically JUMPED up on that counter top, took a look around the room (for the attack snake) and then RAN out of the house! With my adrenaline pumping and my heart racing, I got into my car and drove quickly down the road to a little convenience store. Sitting in the parking lot, I dialed Robby from my cell phone. I explained my terrible dilemma regarding the snake. He didn't seem that worried about a snake sharing our home with us; it seems that he was on the golf course (that meant that he was NOT going to be of much help to me that day). "What would you like for me to do?", he asked. Ummm...let's see...COME HOME AND FIND THAT SNAKE AND KILL IT!!! He told me he would call his father and he could come over and help me find the snake.
I drove back to the house to find my father-in-law already waiting in the driveway for me...at least HE was taking this matter seriously. Upon entering the house, I decided to give my housekeeper a call to find out exactly where she saw that "little snake". She informed me that she saw it by the chair in the living room...and it tried to strike out at her...OH MY GOSH; this was freaking me out for sure now! So, then I asked, "How big was this LITTLE snake?" She replied, "Oh...about 6 feet long." THAT was NOT "little"!...and WHY would she just leave it there in my living room? OK... to be fair to her, she was most likely as afraid of snakes as I was and really what COULD she do? My father-in-law and I began our search. We searched EVERYWHERE...even took a broom and ran it under the stove...got a flashlight...got on our bellies...NO SNAKE. Had yet another snake escaped in my house...or left the same way it had entered?
Well, I'm sorry to say that we never did find that snake. Robby wondered if it even ever had existed...he said that the housekeeper may have imagined it (how can you IMAGINE a 6 foot snake??). As for me? I continued to look around corners and made sure I wore my shoes in the house, wondering if one day that snake would pop up and I could possibly step on it. I was NOT happy without closure AGAIN regarding a missing snake in my home. After a while, I stopped thinking about him and decided that perhaps he had indeed left the same way he had come in. This fact, however, did nothing to change my feelings about snakes; probably made them worse...what is worse than hating snakes?? Hating them very much!
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