The Holiday Return

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

Robert Frost

For lots of people, returning gifts (which don’t fit, turn out to be duplicates, or are just dumb) is a holiday nightmare. For Son #4 and I, it’s become a class of entertainment all its own. You just never know what you’re going to find at the customer service desk.

Because Son #4 is 6’ 8”, buying him clothes that fit can be an iffy proposition, which is how we ended up in the Men’s Department of the South Towne Macy’s a few days after Christmas. We were in line behind an early 20’s guy wearing an obviously brand new, very stylish leather jacket. I don’t recall what he was returning, but he and the clerk were deep in conversation.  It went on long enough that the guy appeared to get too warm and slipped off his jacket, laying it beside him on the counter. Curled all the way up his left arm was a snake—a python—I’m guessing it was about 3 feet long. The clerk stepped back abruptly.

“Hey,” the guy said, holding up both arms in a universal sign of peace. “I got him for Christmas, didn’t I little buddy?” He reached over with his right hand to tickle the chin on the snake–if snakes had chins. He was clearly delighted with his new pet. The reptile ignored his owner, lifted its head, twisted around, and focused his unblinking eyes directly on the clerk. I had a sudden mental vision of a turbaned snake charmer playing his flute. The clerk backed up another step. The expression on his face had turned from wary to slightly alarmed.

 “There, there, little buddy,” the owner cooed. “We’ll be out of here right away, and you can curl up for a nice nap at home.” The snake said nothing, but he did slowly unwind the rest of his long body and glide silently across the counter. The clerk looked wildly in either direction for someone in charge, but the aisles of racks were empty; just we four humans and the reptile.

Then the snake began to undulate, his long body shuddering in waves. A lump in the middle of his torso materialized, and the movement of the snake caused it to inch forward with each spasm. The owner was now staring at the snake in bewilderment. He clearly had no clue what was going on. Son #4 grinned at me, and I grinned in return. Like the clerk, we took a step back. We all too familiar with the behavior of several distant relatives of the critter.

Unhinging its jaws, the snake opened its mouth, and its next contraction erupted a partially desiccated rat dripping digestive juices onto the counter top. Most of the tissue and musculature was gone, but parts of the skeleton were still intact, and the smell of the rotting body was instantaneous and inescapable. The clerk screamed and began dry heaving. He reached for the phone through the entryway into the storage area, punching numbers and yelling for security, backup, custodial services, and maybe an ambulance—I’m not sure about that part.

The snake’s owner began to gag, but Son #4 and I were hard pressed to keep from laughing. We agreed it might be best to return his Christmas gift on a later visit to the store. (I still wish we’d had cell phones in those days—YouTube would have loved those pictures!)

I don’t know what finally happened to the snake or its owner, but I do know that a few days later, I was at the annual Christmas party of my Reading Circle. I ended up sitting by the husband of a fairly new member whom I hadn’t met before. When I asked him what he did for a living, he said he was in retail management. “And you won’t believe what happened in my store last week! Some idiot brought his pet python into the Men’s Department and all hell broke loose . . . .”

Yep. I can just imagine.