The Reptile Lover

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

I married a man who loves reptiles. As a kid in Houston, Texas, he caught turtles in the bayou near his house—lots of them. They lived in a Walmart swimming pool in his back yard until they could escape–which turned out to be often. (Apparently, turtles are wily creatures who, once they make up their minds about something, keep at it till they accomplish their goal.) So, it made perfect sense to my husband that while he was out walking one afternoon in the hills behind the U of U and a snake slithered across his path, that he pick it up and bring it home as a pet for the kids. What?

My husband told me recently that he read that humans’ fear of snakes may be part of our genetic coding, rather than just a learned behavior. This was not much comfort to me. I have had way too many encounters with “A Narrow fellow in the Grass,” and never a single meeting “Without a tighter Breathing/ And Zero at the Bone (Emily Dickinson).” So, living with a snake was not my idea of a good time.

Assuring me that the snake was not dangerous, my husband dragged out an old five-gallon fish tank, added what he considered a suitable habitat (rocks and dirt), and the snake was set up nicely. Naturally, the boys loved it. The girls, who almost always demonstrated better sense, were standoffish.

One night when my husband was out of town on business (naturally), the snake crawled out of his cage and disappeared. The younger kids were in bed, but Daughter #1 and I searched frantically for a couple of hours in every corner, under couches and chairs, on low shelves, even flashing a light under the piano. No snake. Finally, she said she wasn’t sleeping alone with that ‘thing’ on the loose. My feeling exactly.  So, she crawled in bed with me, and we spent most of the night waking every 20 minutes or so, checking between the blankets and sheets for an invader. About an hour after we got up the next morning, that critter crawled out from under my bed. True story.

Turns out that snakes are pretty low maintenance. It molted a couple of times over the next few months, and I was both disturbed and fascinated that a creature could simply crawl out of its skin and leave the exterior old worn-out cells behind. (Something I’ve often wanted to be able to do!) But when the leaves began dropping from the trees, snake-care became more involved.

Worried that the snake couldn’t just slink off to a cool corner and hibernate, my husband called a herpetologist at the zoo and had a long conversation about how to make sure our snake was comfortable all winter. This was not a subject of interest to me—it was also not good news for my stay-at-least-four-feet-away-from anything-that-crawls-on-its-belly rule. The expert decreed that because the snake would be sluggish all winter, we had to force feed it occasionally. Who even knew that was possible?

The food of choice was hot dogs chopped into small hunks. My husband held the snake and held its mouth open with a toothpick (I’m not making this up), while I shoved one piece of hotdog at a time down the snake’s throat. When the snake seemed full (?), I added a vitamin C—expert’s orders. (Do snakes even get scurvy?) We fed that snake all winter. I have always wondered if he/she/it was grateful?

One sunny morning the next spring Son #6, who was about 4 years-old at the time, came through the front door, his pudgy hand clasped around the throat of a snake which was almost as tall as he was. “I found Daddy’s snake,” he announced with great pride. The snake didn’t seem particularly excited to be found as it was twisting around violently trying to escape.

“That’s not your dad’s snake,” I said. “His snake is upstairs in its cage.”

Son #6 turned the snake so he could stare into its beady eyes. “Then whose snake is this?” he asked.

An excellent question. And the answer?  “NOT OURS!”