I Don’t Like Spiders and Snakes

by Lisa Curry

Recently, my husband, Glen, started telling me about a coworker’s pet boa constrictor, which was living in an aquarium at work. Yes, you heard right – in the workplace.

It was about three feet long, but was only a baby, he said, and would grow to be about six feet long by the time it was a year old.

Good grief, rather large for a pet, I thought.

He was really excited the day he came home and told me he got to see the snake eat a live mouse.

The snake was lying on a log in its aquarium. The owner dropped the mouse in. The mouse sniffed around and approached the snake, whiskers twitching.

“Then, BAM!” Glen said. “Before you could blink an eye, the snake grabbed that mouse by the head and wrapped himself around it.”

“Um… wow,” I said.

“The mouse’s little feet were kicking like mad,” he added. “When they stopped moving, the snake ate him. Headfirst. Just swallowed him down.”

I shuddered. “Yuck, that makes me feel sad for the mouse.”

“Well, yeah, me too,” he said. “But it was pretty cool to see.”

Soon thereafter, the snake’s owner, who is European and will return to Europe next month, started talking about getting rid of the snake. The pet store from which he purchased it was willing to take it back – if he returned the aquarium and accessories as well – but would not refund any of his money. He said he might just turn it loose outside, behind the office.

“That’s terrible,” I said when my husband told me. “That snake can’t survive here in cold weather.”

“I know,” Glen said. “I could offer to take it.”

I don’t even like to set foot in the reptile house at the zoo, and he knows it. I pictured a six-foot boa constrictor wrapped around my poor old deaf sixteen-year-old wiener dog, Erma, her little feet kicking like that mouse’s. It could happen in my house. After all, Erma managed to kill my sons’ hamster, Kirby, a few years back. So it might be a case of rough justice, of what comes around goes around, but still… “You must be joking,” I said. “Absolutely not.”

When the snake’s owner went away recently, Glen filled in for weekly snake-feeding duty at work. He went to PetSmart at lunchtime and bought it pre-killed, frozen mice, even though they cost a lot more than live mice. I guess he didn’t really want to be the one to toss a live mouse to its doom, no matter how cool that National Geographic moment might be.

Today he brought the snake home from work with him.

You think I caved, don’t you?

Well, I didn’t.

We delivered it this evening to a teenage neighbor boy up the street. He loves snakes and was thrilled to pieces to have it. His father, who gave permission, seemed quite pleased as well.

I’m not so sure about his mother, who wasn’t consulted before permission was granted. She said, “Gee, thanks, Lisa. And I thought we were friends.”

But she was kidding. She’s such a good pet owner that the hermit crabs her kids brought home from the beach have survived multiple winters in her house – unlike the ones my kids brought home – because she actually bathes them and mists them and keeps their aquarium heated like you’re supposed to. She was talking about moving the snake to a bigger aquarium than the one he came in when we told her he’d probably be six feet long in less than a year.

I think that snake has her charmed already.

They were discussing naming him Slinky when we left. Somehow, being named Slinky makes him seem a little less creepy. I told them to call us when they feed him. The boys and I just might like to come over and see that.