On Friday morning I'd gotten all showered up and ready to spend the whole day studying for my
MCSE (ick). I'd noticed that Wendy's (a
roomate) two foot+
corn snake (named "
Snake") was all jumpy and ready to play. I figured I'd take the thing out while I watched
TV Funhouse on
Tivo. Nothing like pre-study television… So I was watching Fogey and the gang when I noticed Snake had
vanished about halfway into the sofa. Dammit... I couldn't just pull her out
backwards, so I let it finish
disappearing, figuring she'd pop out behind the sofa, come out thru the bottom or something simple. But she
disappeared into the couch.
I proceeded to
tear the
crap out of that couch.... As much crap-tearing as I could anyway, since it is
technically the property of an ex-roomate. He would probably
have a bird at it's crap-tornedness whenever he decides to pick it up. No luck tho... So I tore the crap out of the whole living room in thoughts it'd gone elsewhere. Two tables, two recliners and another sofa later and still nothing.
Crud. Somehow, I was
pretty damn sure it was still in the couch though.
Later my other roommate Jason came home. After an order of
Domino's and round of
Hogan's Heros we set forth to construct what we considered horribly clever
snake traps. After looking at some snake traps on the
Internet, we began to build our own out of house garbage. In the spirit of
Junkyard Wars we made three
bigass traps out of
cardboard boxes, some
fluorescent light screen and
duct tape. I bought a dozen mice to load the three (
ventilated)
Tupperwares that would bait the traps.
The plan was simple, we throw a
mouse in a 'tup with some water and carrots, put that in a
snake trap and wait. Or at least that’s the best plan I could come up with after talking with the
zoo,
animal control, and a
hunting supplier.
Meanwhile, the
house is torn to shreds. We sat on the
floor to watch
tv, had to pull down then replace a barricade in the stairs whenever
ascending them, and were always
stumbling over these huge snake traps. I was afraid to put the mess back together since we might further hide or hurt Snake. A
weekend passed and no Snake.
The whole time I was on Snake
Alert.
Baiting the snake traps at night and cleaning them in the morning became a
ritual. We
reassembled the living room a bit, but I made sure everyone pulled the cushion off the sofa before sitting on it. Checking snake-attracting warm spots like the refrigerator and water heater became second nature.
A day or two later, I didn’t feel like doing much so I was just watching
BattleBots. My arm was on the
armrest of the couch when I felt something move. I thought I was mistaken, but I explored the armrest and Snake was in it, all curled up. After about a half hour of careful couch
dissection, I had Snake out of there and back in the
aquarium, safe and sound.
So, if you loose a snake in the house, keep these things in mind:
If it’s
comfy where you lost it, it probably won’t move far. While usually fast,
reptiles don’t like running around wasting
energy.
Snake traps are neat, but they don’t work on something that’s not
hungry or
thirsty. Snake normally goes for a week plus without eating.
Don’t give up. Reptiles are a lot more patient then you are, and it might be a week or two before the
critter even thinks of moving.