The One That Got Away
My family has always used humor to get through tough times. Almost twenty years ago, when I lived at my grandmother’s house, I had quite a few reptiles and amphibians. Imagine that. I had a room designated for warmer weather reptiles like bearded dragons and snakes. My bedroom, across the hall, was a consistent year-round seventy-three degrees, perfect for tropical frogs. I’ve always been fascinated with venomous snakes, and among my cold-blooded menagerie were a couple of venomous copperheads and a baby dusky pygmy rattlesnake. One day, one of the venomous reptiles escaped and my family swore a blood oath, or something like that, and never told my grandmother. Well, that is, until she was on her deathbed. I’ll come back to that later, that’s where the humor comes in.
I kept the copperheads housed together in a fifty-five-gallon aquarium with bricks placed on top of the screen lid to weigh it down, like a responsible reptile keeper would. The copperheads were only temporary pets that I had recently caught while driving home. I’ve had a dangerous habit for most of my life of moving snakes off of busy roads. I’m usually the guy people call to relocate copperheads from their property, I’m always thankful for those calls when neither snakes nor humans are harmed. I was planning to relocate those two “nuisance” copperheads, but I didn’t get the chance. When I went into the bedroom to bag up the snakes, I saw something was out of place. Actually, something was missing…
As bad luck would have it, one of the two copperheads was missing in action. He wasn’t under the mulch. He wasn’t hiding in the hide box. He was GONE! Oh boy, this is not good. To add insult to injury, the missing copperhead was the larger and more aggressive one of the two. This eliminated my first thought of one snake consuming the other. I mean it’s been known to happen on occasion, but in this case, it would have been biologically impossible for the smaller copperhead to have eaten one twice his length and girth. I panicked. I really freaked out. I didn’t know what to do, I just knew I was scared to death of the possible scenarios that played out in my brain.
I immediately carried the entire aquarium outside and dumped it in the middle of the front yard, hoping it was just under the substrate, somehow. I sifted through the mulch feverishly to no avail. The damn thing was nowhere to be found. I ran the smaller copperhead across the street to a wooded lot and let it slither away. I ran to the house, straight back to the reptile room, and searched with the fury of life and death. Even though copperhead venom doesn’t typically result in death in humans, if this snake envenomated my grandmother it wouldn’t be good for her, and the aftermath would be much worse for me. My mom and uncles would have literally killed me if any of us had got bitten. I’d already been warned against keeping venomous snakes, but I’m the reptile expert. I knew what I was doing, at least that’s what I told myself in defiance of their wisdom. Way to prove them right Stan!
I did not tell my Mawmaw. How could I? She’d be so scared, and likely kick me out on the street. I’m not even entirely sure where she was while I was flipping over furniture and enclosures like a cartoon Tasmanian devil, I just had to find the snake before she got home. This at least bought me time to come up with a plan in the event that I couldn’t find the snake. I needed a good lie; a scheme that she wouldn’t see through. It had to be a good one. The snake was nowhere. My mom and uncles were furious with me, as they should have been. I was disgusted with myself. These snakes were in a fifty-five-gallon aquarium with bricks on top of the screen lid. I mean, I struggled to move the lid. I looked everywhere; absolutely everywhere. No snake. Everyone in my family was calling me and cussing me out, but we still didn’t tell Mawmaw. I called my uncle to ask if he’d let it go to mess with me, and through clenched teeth he threatened to end my life if I didn’t find the snake soon. Oh man.
I convinced my grandmother that we had roaches. It wasn’t exactly a lie because well, we had roaches, huge ones. Some people churched it up and called them palmetto bugs, but they were full blown roaches without a doubt. They sometimes come with the territory with old homes. The moist dirt floor basement was prime real-estate for those guys, and sometimes they made their way into the kitchen. It was an easy sell. I ran to into town to a hardware store and nearly bought them out of bug bombs. I bought enough aerosolized insecticide to kill the circus. I figured since roaches can survive the apocalypse, but they can’t survive the toxic fumes from this poison, then a copperhead stood no chance of survival. This is one of the only times in my life I chose to deliberately kill a snake. In a very real sense, it was either him or me. I love snakes, but I loved my grandmother infinitely more.
We never found the snake. There was never a smell. I can’t say for sure that I even killed him. The house wasn’t exactly water tight, so all the snake had to do is crawl outside under a door or find a hole and drop into the basement and then slink on outside. Some of these reasons may illustrate further why the house was bulldozed after she passed away, I digress. I did see a dead copperhead around the same size about a mile up the road after that event. I convinced myself it was that snake. That didn’t stop the nightmares that woke me in a cold sweat as I tip toed to my light switch, praying I didn’t step on a venom laden land mine. It didn’t stop the intrusive thoughts about my grandmother reaching into her sock drawer and coming out with a viper on the end of her finger. Whatever fear I felt, I knew my grandmother’s trepidation would be one hundred-fold. So, we collectively agreed to lie. All of us.
We never told Mawmaw, that is, until she was literally breathing her last breaths in the hospital. She was barely breathing, and hadn’t been able to talk for the good part of a week at this point. We got the call and knew that this was the moment we’d all be dreading. We weren’t sure how long it’d take before she eased out of this life and into the next, but we knew it was likely going to be any minute. As we were all circled around the hospital bed with teary eyes, my mother in her sweet voice leaned over to my grandma and said “Mom, I just wanted you to know Stan let a copperhead go in your house and we never told you, I always felt really bad about that and I had to get it off my chest.”
The room erupted in laughter as we all remembered that time. For a moment the heart wrenching hospital experience was abridged by belly laughter, much to the confusion of the attending staff nearby, I’m sure. How was I so dumb to have ever let that happen? I’m not a bad reptile keeper, and always took every precaution, but sometimes snakes be snaking. We were all so thankful that nothing bad ever came of it. Me most of all.
That was the last time I ever kept venomous reptiles in the house. I made a promise after that traumatic event almost twenty years ago to never keep them again longer than a night. The only caveat being that if I did temporarily house venomous snakes, they’d be locked in no less than two secure enclosures. One inside the other so there’d be no possible way of escape. I’ve kept good on that promise, for the most part, barring the impromptu presentation here and there that required a venomous snake or spider for educational purposes over the years. I’ll still relocate rogue vipers from time to time but they rarely come into my house. Although I still love those guys, I think for me personally they’re just better behind a camera lens and not under my bed or wherever that escape artist ended up.
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