"There's a Snake in my Boot!" ~ Sheriff Woody from Toy Story

One chilly night last winter I came home after a long hard day of work and decided to watch some TV to unwind. I usually keep my house pretty cool in the winter time because I have oil heat. It is quite expensive to fill and you can always wear an extra layer for a lot less. Plus winter time should be filled with wool socks, blankets and more sweatshirts then you can count. One way I like to indulge with some extra warmth is by placing a stand up heater that automatically turns on and off according to time or a set temperature, in random rooms like my bedroom. I’ll set this heater for something like 74, shut the door and let the room become nice and toasty compared to the rest of the house.

On this chilly night I was watching TV and became sleepy and I said 20 feet was too far to walk and I’m comfy so I’ll just sleep on the couch. This worked until about 4:30am when my back started to ache, my pillow was on longer comfortable, and my feet had gotten cold. I hate cold feet when trying to sleep.

I turned off the TV and walked towards my warm waiting bedroom.
When I pushed open the door I noticed something on the floor. A snake? My first thought was who’s been in my house? There are a few friends that like to play practical jokes on me. After a few minutes of pondering who could have gotten in, I came to the conclusion that I don’t think anyone has been in my house. I took a tentative step forward and the fake snake, did indeed move.

Crap.

It’s 4:30am in the morning, I’m tired I don’t want to deal with this right now. I send a text message to my step dad and brother and inform them of my issues. As I wait for their responses, which were KILL IT NOW! I’m groggily trying to figure out my next step. Is it a poisonous snake? If it not, then I don’t want to kill it. If it is I really do need to kill it. I keep field hockey sticks in my bedroom so I was thinking about using one to smash it. The question of  do I need to clean up the  guts now to keep it from doing weird things too my floor? Or do I have a few hour period where it wont hurt anything if left unattended. I get a second KILL IT text from my brother. By this point I’ve shied away from that option because I’m really tired and I just want to go to bed. If I kill it and have to clean up the guts and I might wake up more. No, I don’t want to do that, I just want to go to bed.

Clearly I cannot just let the snake wander around the house while I’m asleep. Who knows if it would show up again? So I decide I want to capture it to keep it from going anywhere. I wander into my kitchen, get a pie pan and a bowl. I come walking back to my room and find the snake is still there. Very carefully and quickly I kind of throw/toss/place the pie pan over the snake. I put the bowl top just for more weight and then do my little ick dance, where I make weird faces and question what I just did. This takes about another 30 second until I crawl into bed, turn the lights off and go back to sleep.

Note: Yes, I still slept in the same room as the snake, it was nice and warm I didn’t want to go anywhere else and wait for the room to heat up. I did sleep well with just a few dreams involving snakes.

So the next morning I wake up and kind of hope the snake thing was a figment of the imagination and really I just threw a pie pan on the floor last night. I call a few people to see if they can remove this snake for me but everyone is either busy or out of town. By this time I realize I’m going to have to suck it up and take care of this issue by myself.  First, I go take my class at the gym before dealing with this snake.

When I get home from the gym I go downstairs, grab a giant squeegee thing and a tall bucket. I head back upstairs to face the snake. After  a few calming breaths I enter the bedroom, put the bucket on the ground and hold the squeegee in my left hand. I remove the bowl and put it aside. Very quickly I flick the pie pan off the snake. Yup, still there. That was not a dream. At this point the snake, I feel, makes a rattling sound. I quickly start using the squeegee to try and get it in the bucket. After a few moments of holding my breath, the snake goes in, the bucket stands upright and I can breath a sign of relief. I quickly take it outside and place it on my porch. This snake was probably as round as a sharpie marker, about a foot and half long with brown, tan, and white markings in the shape of diamonds all over its body.

With the snake safely outside my house, I pull out the computer and try to look up what kind of snake it is. I learned really helpful tips like you can tell if the snake I poisonous bases on its eyes. If they are round iris then they are NOT poisonous. If they are slits like cats they are. Okay, being someone not very comfortable around snakes how in the world am I suppose to look at its eyes? I don’t want to get that close! Same thing with the shape of their head I think it something like more rounded is not poisonous verse more pointed is. Either method involved getting way too close for my comfort. I kind of gave up, google wasn’t failing me as much as information overload. So I waited for my neighbor to get home and asked him.

He looked at the snake and was not sure. So he said he’d bring it work with him and find out. He later called and told me that it was a rat snake and he let it go around his work. Now, I kind of have a feeling that “letting it go” around work is probably about the same as when your hamster goes to live on a farm, but that’s okay. The snake was identified and removed.
So the lesson learned is if you have determined the snake laying on your bedroom floor is in fact NOT a fake one, capture it by placing a pie pan over it until you have more time to deal with it.