SNAKE!!!!!!

Some of you know about my issues (i.e., phobia) where spiders are concerned. My husband gets a kick out of my panicky flights from rooms where dust bunnies posing as spiders have been spotted, but tends to simultaneously and conveniently forget about his own little problem regarding another creature, namely, his irrational and all-encompassing fear of snakes. He doesn’t call it fear. He refuses to acknowledge it as fear. He prefers to simply say he hates snakes. I know better. I don’t hate spiders. I’m scared to death of the friggin things and it has nothing to do with hate. I’m just scared shitless of ‘em. What my husband doesn’t know that I know is that I know the big secret, that secret being that you don’t scream like a little bitch when you are confronted with something you hate. You scream like a girl when you are confronted with something that scares the everlovin pants offa ya. So I’ll tell you the story of how I first realized that he didn’t actually hate snakes, but instead hated how badly they scared him. I got permission to tell it too but I’ll admit, I didn’t run this past him for editorial comments before publishing it so he’ll have to live with that little oversight and the resulting embarrassment.

Many years ago, back in the days when we were childless, if you don’t count the fact that having a husband should almost always count as having a child, I was relaxing in our family room, reading a book that didn’t have illustrations, and enjoying the early evening solitude, when I heard the garage door fly open and a voice I didn’t at first recognize scream “SNAAAAAKE!!!!! SNAKE IN THE GARAGE!!!!!”. I sat there a second and wondered if that had, in fact, been my husband, and debated as to whether or not I was supposed to actually do anything, and before the decision of “screw it” had fully formed in my head, the shriek of “SNAKE” came again, followed by “GET THE HELL OUT HERE AND DO SOMETHING!!!”. So much for the book, peace, quiet or solitude, and out the door I padded in my jammies and stocking feet.

There he stood, white faced and trembling on the opposite side of the garage and, being the kind, ever thoughtful, understanding and sympathetic wife that I am, I barked “WHAT?” He whispered, “There’s a snake in here.” “Where? Where is the snake?” said I. He pointed an unsteady finger at the big red toolbox tower immediately to my left, the same toolbox he bought one Christmas and tried to pass off as my gift and guess how long that idea lasted, so I got down on my hands and knees to take a peek under it. He immediately wailed “DON’T put your face down there, it’s gonna BITE you!” Ignoring him, I grabbed a flashlight and kept looking around and just as I was about to tell him that he was on crack and there was no snake under there, I saw it. I saw the beastie, the demon, the horror that had caused him to completely crack and abandon all pretense of control.

It was horrible! It was terrifying and beyond imagination. Oh, for the love of God, it was an 8 inch long baby garter snake, curled up in the corner and scared out of it’s head-of-a-pin sized mind. It wasn’t a snake. It was a glorified worm with eyes.

I snatched a pair of work gloves, hit the garage door button and as I reached under the toolbox to retrieve little Anaconda, Jr., my husband went bolting out into the yard in case I missed it and it tried to swallow him whole for having ratted him out. I grabbed Jr. and hauled him out from under the tool box and, to his credit, he did take a few jabs at my fingers with his itty bitty teeny tiny itsy bitsy widdle teeth. I shuffled to the yard and heard my husband say “Are ya gonna KILL it?” NO. I’m not gonna kill it. I’m gonna toss it down to the edge of the yard so it can go on home or where ever it is that giant man eating snakes go, and against his most strenuous protests, I got a firm grip on Jr.’s tail and underhanded him toward the end of the yard.

Or, better put, I TRIED to.

Because as I released him, he took another bite at my glove.

This time his teeth caught.

And rather than fly off into the night, he flew straight up into the air about 20 feet and landed right on my husband’s head.

And that is the night I realized beyond the shadow of a doubt that he didn’t hate snakes.

Both the snake and my husband made full recoveries.