For the sake of context, I usually sleep in the guest room because it is closer to where I needed to be if Mom needed help in the night, and because I tend to be a toss and turner and no surprise Talker when sleeping.
FORTUNATELY I also tend to fall asleep while reading so the light was on.
About 1:30am I woke up and felt something cold and dampish around my upper arm.
Thought we had a roof leak since it seemed to be moving – That must be dripping … right
WRONG – Sat up in time to see a SNAKE almost hidden under the pillow I HAD, up until about 4 seconds ago had wrapped around me. Something I would have missed had the light not been on.
After a non-crucial (it turns out) one or two seconds to take a fast deep breath, dump the waste basket and slam it over the snake.
OKAY NOW WHAT DO I DO?!?!?
Oh my good Lord in Heaven, there is a portion of it sticking out, but if I lift the edge minutely to shove it back in will it escape like the rattler that bit Valerie. What would Valerie do (our cousin who raises snakes) Vaguely I remember seeing Valerie using a flat piece of cardboard to slide under their Snake boxes
I used a 14 inch Double Ended Crochet hook to push its bits under the basket.
and thought, yet again
MMOG, NOW WHAT
All I can say is THANK GOD FOR COLOR CARDS and the fact that most are done with “over sized” cardboard. Better yet thank goodness I was working on some color cross refs yesterday .
Wait, I can’t leave that color card under the snake, what if it makes a mess and damages the samples!
By this time, the colorful words have reached sufficient volume so that TH has somewhat awoken and comes in to see if I am Okay, why are there tissues all over the floor, and why am is standing with my weight baring down on the top of the waste basket where the tissues belong.
No, I AM NOT OKAY, there is a snake under the waste basket and I have
ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT TO DO NEXT?
Following the careful replacing of the Presencia Color Card with an appriopriated size Priority mail box (the guest room is also my “shipping center” but the color card was closer”
After several minutes of discussion, ending with you cannot kill it and are you sure you did not just have a nightmare?
“FINE I will take it outside – but if it is dumb enough to come back, before it is large enough to catch mice, then its safety is NOT assured.”
The boring end to this little adventure. I carried it outside and dumped it into the road (as far as I willing to go in sleepwear.
For those interested in the details. I came back in and sat down to GOOGLE Maryland SNAKES – it appears to be a Black Rat Snake – not a poisonous breed but still not welcome in most people’s beds
Based on the picture in the Wiki entry, it appears to have been a young Black Rat Snake.
Now I need to go call the family herpetologists and find out what to do next – to determine how it got into the house. Likely the same way the field mice do.
I think I will go read email. Hopefully that will be less exciting.
Wheat
P.S. I solemnly promise never to complain about the odd size card stock used by most YARNandTHREAD manufacturers to make their color cards no matter who awkward it is to try to mail them or the awkward shape of that particular (shoe box) priority mail box.
Tiny URL : http://tinyurl.com/snake-blog
What a lovely snake, now if it will just stay out of the bed…..
Hope you find where it got in and can satisfy yourself it isn’t coming back. Is there a mosquito net type thing for snakes?
I feel your fright:) We had a run it with a brown snake in the house when I lived in Guam as a young bride. Thankfully not IN our bed!
How many days will your skin be crawling?
OMG, I would have fainted dead away and the crashing of my body to the floor would have brought help, however I don’t think that I could sleep in that bed again EVAH!
I had a similar situation just a few days ago, but it was in the kitchen during the day. My Dh workd 3rd shift and when I went running into the bedroom to tell him there was a snake in the kitchen (I am not as brave as you all) he has never woken up so quickly. He killed it and took it outside (it struck at him as he was trying to find something to catch it in, luckily it missed. I did a search and though tI had found out what it was and felt better knowing it wasn’t poisonous (still didn’t belong in my house), until the next morning when DH came home from work and stopped out in the driveway picked up the snake and started looking at it close came back inside and informed me that we were wrong! Seems that even though they are not native to our area in the last few years there have been reports of CottonMouths and my husband works at the river so it could have come home in the back of the truck or any other vehicle around here since we are so close. Well a guy my hubby works with was telling him what to look for to identify it because it is easy to mistake when just looking at a picture online (a friend of his removes snakes from buildings and houses for a living. Unfortunally Cotton mouths are very poisonous so sleep has been very light for me since then I keep having nightmares that I’ll wake up and have one in my bed!
If I have nightmares tonight it’s definately YOUR fault.
BTW, last I knew there are no snakes on Ohau. Might be a nice place to move to. 🙂
I had a sjmilar situation just a few days ago, but it was in the kitchen during the day. My Dh workd 3rd shift and when I went running into the bedroom to tell him there was a snake in the kitchen (I am not as brave as you all) he has never woken up so quickly. He killed it and took it outside (it struck at him as he was trying to find something to catch it in, luckily it missed. I did a search and though tI had found out what it was and felt better knowing it wasn’t poisonous (still didn’t bel9ng in my house), until the next morning when DH came home from work and stopped out in the driveway picked up the snake and started looking at it close came back inside and informed me that we were wrong! Seems that even though they are not native to our area in the last few years there have been reports of CottonMouths and my husband works at the river so it could have come home in the back of the truck or any other vehicle around here since we are so close. Well a guy my hubby works with was telling him what to look for to identify it because it is easy to mistake when just looking at a picture online (a friend of his removes snakes from buildings and houses for a living. Unfortunally Cotton mouths are very poisonous so sleep has been very light for me since then I keep having nightmares that I’ll wake up and have one in my bed!;
Oh yikes! No wonder you were replying so early in the morning to my email instead of sleeping. That would have really woken me up fast, too!
The closest I came to ‘sleeping with a snake’ was when we were camping out in a tepee near the Custer Battlefield (we were attending the annual Crowe Fair). Someone alerted us that a snake had been seen before we went back in the tepee. So that is the good news. I realized afterwards, that the snake might have been a good thing, because unfortunately the next morning I found that mouse (mice?) had eaten holes in my angora-blend moebius. Oh well,
mine is a kitchen story too. one morning I hear behind me the sounds of happy cat playing, the sort of sound that means “oh joy, a live toy!”. So, I turned to see our large gray long-hair, Gracie, with a snake in her mouth that she’s flinging up into the air and then recapturing. With what I think is admirable poise and calm, I go to the deck and say to my DH, “Gracie has a snake in the kitchen”. My hero says, “I’m watering the plants.” ??? So, I get a shoebox and scoop up the now unconscious snake from the floor, take it out and put it under a bush. Checked later and it was gone. Asked the herpetologist friend and determined that it was a hog snake that ‘plays dead’ when threatened.
Whoa! Yeah, that would definitely keep me awake the rest of the night. I guess having herpatologists in the family can come in handy. I would definitely sleep with the light on for awhile.
The light may NEVER be turned off again in this life time and I am shaking out pillows and blankets before getting in.
I would need to order anything again. My family would be planning my funeral. You are a good women!!
Hi Charlotte,
The amuzing part is that I had earlier that evening been telling TheHenry about our conversation. It is almost like that chat was a portent of things to come
Wheat
You can always call 911 for a snake emergency – when my husband was on the department the guys would fight over who got to do snake removals – or alien abductions as we call them at my house 😛