Husband for Sale

As we were planning for a trip to the mall last Saturday, I go into Chase's room to get some extra diapers when something catches my attention out of the corner of my eye. My first thought was, "what the heck is a shoestring doing on the floor of Chase's room"... I look closer, my next thought was "how is that one end of the shoestring lifted up off the ground"... I look closer, my next and final thought was, "oh my gosh, is that really what I think it is?!?" Oh yes, it truly was what I thought it was...

(And no, that's not an actual picture, trust me... none of our fingers would ever be that close to a snake. I had to hunt this beauty down on the internet.) The snake was only about 8" long, but we're going to round that up to one foot, because it's my story and I'll tell it how I want to!

I quickly go find Ben, who is feeding Chase in the dining room, and I say to him, "there is an eff'ing snake in Chase's room". Oh yes, this was worthy of dropping the F-bomb. And true to a man's style, he looked at me and said, "Huh?". So I repeated myself, F-bomb and all. Ben says, "I don't like snakes, you have to handle it". I ignored that comment because he's well aware I'm seriously afraid of snakes. I then said, "how the heck are we going to get a snake out of the house". I think he mentioned something like, "open the window", but I think this was the point where I tuned him out because I realized I really was on my own with this fiasco. I mean, come on... even I know that I just can't open the window and be like, "okay, window's open, let's scoot along now little snake".

In all my panic, I finally pull myself together and decide to trap it with a plastic storage lid. (Ben was thoughtful enough to get the lid for me.) After hesitating for several minutes, I finally trapped it in the lid. At this point, I had no idea what to do next. So with a gazillion thoughts going through my mind, I do what any sensible, rational person would do... I called my MIL for advice. I mean, let's be real here, if Ben - my protector - had already removed himself from this situation, I figured that must be a genetic thing. So given this, surely Judi had to handle many situations like this in the past. After discussing different strategies with her, I decided to forgo the thoughts of vacuuming the snake up or dousing it with brake fluid (what the...?!?), and decided to just slowly scoot it towards the door.

I start inching the storage lid along the floor, and about 20 minutes later (no lie) I finally make it to the back patio doors. My strategy was to dump it out on the pool patio and then quickly sweep it out the screen door. (Ben was thoughtful enough to get the broom for me, and oh yeah, he also latched the screen door open.) So after several deep breaths, I finally scoot/throw the lid onto the patio, and sweep the snake out into the yard. I quickly close the screen door and come back inside. A few minutes later - after my heart resumes beating again - I'm lysoling out the plastic storage lid when Ben says to me, (..... wait for it .....), he says "man, I'm still shaking from that whole snake thing". All I could do was stare at him as I was utterly speechless!

I realized that during this whole frantic scene that just occurred, Braedyn's eyes never left the Thomas the Train dvd he was watching. And Chase... well at one point, Chase came over to sit down on the plastic storage lid. He must've thought I was giving out free rides on the thing! But more importantly, I was wondering where the heck the cats were during all this, and how those felines let a snake exist in our home for who knows how long. I go searching for the cats and finally find them... Calvin was eating and Hobbes was sleeping. Have I mentioned that they are both male cats? I have no more words...