Today a story....

With a nod to Aunt Elna, who asked me to write this story down.

The Snake Story

I stared at the gray road and white stripe hypnotically. It had been a long and tiring day and although I was barely awake, I was slumped over in a trance watching the road. Kory and Kendall were both asleep in their car seats behind me and John was seemingly alert as he drove us closer to Burns, then on home to Bend. The road in the flats was monotonous, especially at night. It was a hot summer night and we had the air conditioning going, keeping us somewhat comfortable. I had cooled sweat, felt sticky and was looking forward to a long shower. The tires made the same soft sound going round and round.
Out of the silence John turned to me.
“We have a snake in the car”, he oh so calmly reported.
My trance immediately gone, I looked over at him to see if he was joking to wake me up.
“What in the world are you talking about?”
He didn’t look upset or flustered in any way and the tone of his voice was the same as always. I started to turn back to the relative comfort of my hypnotic state.
“I just felt something around my foot, so I put my hand down to see what it was and a snakes tail went through my hand” he explained coolly.
My mind went in a thousand directions while my feet flew up to the dash.
“How could a snake get in our car? That’s impossible!”
“Uh, I’m not sure but there is one.”
I peered over in the direction of his legs but it was too dark to see anything.
“Why aren’t you stopping this car?”
“I want to wait for a pull out.”
“Are you crazy? Pull off this minute or I’m going to jump out!”
By now my voice was getting higher and louder, while he remained his usual calm self.
“I can wait because it isn’t a rattler.”
“How can you tell since you can’t see it?” I all but yelled.
“There were no rattles when the tail went through my hand.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel any better? Pull OVER!”
About then our headlights picked up a road sign out in the desert and John pulled over. I didn’t even wait for the car to stop before pulling my legs from the dash and jumping out without touching the car floor. I ran down the side road yelling into the black night, to put some distance between ‘it’ and me. I even left my poor granddaughters to their fate in the car. I ran quite a distance before I calmed a little, then my curiosity won out and I turned back to see what was happening. I couldn’t see anything in the dark so returned to where I could make John out.
“Can you see it?”
“Yes…. it’s a bull snake.”
“Is that poisonous?”
“No, but it’s a big one.”
Shudders went through me with those words.
“It was wound around my foot, and I had to pull it free to get out. I’m trying to figure how to get it out of there,” he told me indistinctly. I still couldn’t believe he could take all this so calmly.
“Are Kory and Kendall awake?” I was worried I would have to go and rescue them from the snake.
“No, they’re still asleep” he told me as he bent and looked into their seat.
“What are you going to do?”
“Find a stick.”
“In the dark?”
Actually I was glad for the darkness so I couldn’t see the snake. It was bad enough just picturing it in my imagination. After a few minutes of John making noises walking, he was back at the driver’s side.
“What are you doing now?”
“Trying to lift it out.”
I was tempted to go running down the road again. But by now logic had re-asserted itself and I didn’t know how many other snakes might be out in the dark.
“Is it out yet?”
“Yea.”
“Did you have to touch it?”
“No.”
“Where is it now?” I started peering at the road around my feet.
“It’s on the highway, on this side. It’s OK, get back in.”
“What if there are more snakes in there? How did it get in anyway?”
“I don’t know.” I suspected the laughter I heard in his voice was on account of me.
The last thing in the world I wanted to do was get back in that car, but the second last thing was to stand out there in the dark with a snake. So, I quickly moved and sat in my seat, this time glad to get my feet in and off the road. I was still worked up. John backed up a short ways and our headlights caught the small road sign.
“Do you see that?” I asked unbelievingly.
“Yes” he answered choking while laughing. “We stopped at Rattlesnake Lane, the only side road in sight!”
I was not amused. He drove back onto the highway, and we both felt a big bump as he did.
“Well, I guess I ran over him. He was probably about 3 feet long.”
“I could have lived the rest of my life not hearing that.”
I turned and checked the girls, marveling that they had slept through the whole thing.
“How far is it to Burns?”
“Just a little ways. Do you want to stop?”
“I am not going all the way home in this car tonight! Let’s go to Cliff & Peg’s. That way we can search the luggage tonight and the car tomorrow morning.”
In a short while we were climbing the hill to their house and I couldn’t wait to get me and the girls out of that car. What if that snake was a she and her mate or her babies were still there? It was a creepy feeling and I was still shaking.
“There was a snake in our car” I shouted as soon as I had the back door to the house open.
“What?” They both came running.
We told the story (and several more times over the next few days) as I moved the girls from their car seats into a bed.
“That car would have a new moon roof if that had been me!” my sister-in-law sympathized. John and his brother laughed about the snake and us girls.
Thinking back the next morning I had to laugh at the picture I must have made running madly down that little country road in the dark, yelling. Oh well, it worked for me! The girls didn’t remember a thing about it, and were kind of disappointed to have missed the excitement. Cliff and John checked the car, from the roof to the chassis as I asked, and they reconstructed what must have happened.

The day before we had been in Ontario all day participating in a family sale after the death of John’s grandma. We purchased several things, including a couple of cots in their canvas bags. John had loaded up the back of our red Caravan and filled it. The bull snake must have been cozily napping in one of the canvas bags when loaded into the car. It’s nap being interrupted, it was hot in that bag…and felt the cool air coming from the front. It must have made its way to the air conditioning along the floor, and feeling cooler coiled up. John later told me that the snake filled the entire floor around his feet, and it looked like the whole floor was writhing when he pulled his feet out. Good choice to not tell me at the time, or I might still be running through the desert.
I am very thankful Kendall did not wake up during the snake’s journey under her seat to the front, and especially glad the snake picked John’s seat as its goal. Otherwise John might have gone off the highway when I first discovered it.