Lost in the Snake Pit
Mark Chapple
I’m not sure if any of you remember the film ‘Money Pit’ with Michael Keaton and Shelley Long. They played a couple that bought a renovators dream that gradually got bigger and bigger and then fell apart. Well, recently renovated my house, so I know how they felt. Hopefully mine will not fall apart.
As part of the renovations, the builders also renovated my office, where my snakes live. So most of my house consisted of open frames, gaping holes in walls, torn up flooring, pile of boxes and clothing and a general mess. The builders referred to my office as ‘the snake pit’.
Amongst all of this the routine of life must continue. As such, when feeding my snakes the during the renovations, I took them out of their cages as per usual and put them in separate containers to feed them. Unfortunately I forgot to secure the lid on one of the containers. When returned to replace them, one had escaped.
Normally this would not be much of an issue as there is nowhere to go in the office and hiding is difficult, but with holes in the walls and the whole house being open, this rogue snake could be anywhere. Inside a wall, in one of the new rooms, under the multitude of boxes containing all of our belongings that had been shifted from cupboards, in the roof, outside (doors were open) – it had a vast area to hide in.
We were not just doing a simple renovation; this was almost a complete rebuild of one half of the house so we had emptied every cupboard, book shelf, and the two children’s bedrooms. The lounge was stacked with boxes, cupboards, chests of drawers, chairs, clothing, and everything we own. It is a disaster area.
Consequently, I was thinking that this snake is possibly gone for good, and with winter approaching. This was not good.
My wife, who does not love the snakes as I do, went ballistic. I didn’t even want to tell her. I searched everywhere I could but of course I couldn’t check under every box and behind everything in the house. This was devastating.
I knew that the snake would probably be close by, but where was a total mystery.
The next day I told the builders and plasterers that I had a missing snake in the house – just in case they met it and decided that it was a danger to them and wanted to take a shovel or any such handy tool to the deadly beastie. I had to assure them it was not venomous.
I trotted off to work as per normal the next day, worried about the snake that I couldn’t find and getting very annoyed at myself and my stupidity. My daughter was even more annoyed as she liked this particular snake and to handled it a lot. I wasn’t backing too many winners in the popularity stakes by this stage.
About half way through the day, Mitch, the snake, presented himself to Surfer Joe, the plasterer. He had been living on the top of our dressing table. Mitch is a curious snake and he was poking his head out to see what all of the commotion was.
Joe was an animal lover who also enjoyed snakes and lizards – he had just returned from holiday in Thailand on and had been known to go looking for the local wildlife occasionally.
It was also lucky that my daughter was home that day and she was able to collect Mitch up and put him back in his cage. Whilst Joe liked looking, he wasn’t sure about touching.
Snakes are territorial animals and generally when they escape in a home they will find a place to hide and often turn up weeks later. One of my friends had his lost snake turn up in a sock drawer 6 months later.
It was foolish of me to let my pet escape but I was lucky enough to get it back.
This reminds me of another friend of mine who was happily working at home when his wife said to him, “I think there’s a snake behind your computer.” At first he thought she was joking. He promptly leapt up when he realized she wasn’t.
Three hours later the LA animal marshal turned up to collect the snake. I guess I was lucky to get mine back. Whoever lost that one, didn’t. You can see photos of the one that did get away and hid behind the computer on my web site at this address: Owners reptiles
Mark Chapple is the Author of "How to build enclosures
for reptiles"
Find out how to build these cages as well as arboreal cages. Full color pictures,
detailed diagrams and easy to follow, step-by-step instructions.
http://www.reptile-cage-plans.com