“Lampropeltis triangulum in the Car”
The scene to this epic drama opens inauspiciously enough on a mundane mid-July Monday morning.
The little woman (now long departed, perhaps due in no small part what transpires herein) is going out shopping.
In the familiar friendly family chariot. Little knowing what unseen dangers lurk inside. The car starts easily and leaves smoothly with its freshly-made-up, cool, collected and carefully coiffed occupant.
A few minutes later I am suddenly confronted with a hysterical, hair askew, mascara-streaked, tearful, sweaty and breathless individual who has run back home from about 800 feet away. After some difficulty in translating her panic-speak, I determine that there is apparently a report of a snake in the car.
And a big one. As large as my forearm is around. And I lift weights. I gather it has been seen receding behind the dashboard. In a suitably serpentine manner.
Okay, time is of the essence. I do not want this monster to use its one arm and microbe brain to steal the car by somehow driving it away. I reach the thankfully-still-immobilized automobile. I gingerly lower myself into the allegedly reptilian realm. At this point I am not aware of any squirming leather-like protuberances. So, I slowly ease the possibly infiltrated machine into reverse, back the car up the driveway to outside the garage, the rarely used gear whining in apparent pain.
My first response to emergencies is to get tools. So I leave the car door open and go for flashlights, coat hanger wire, air horn, shaving cream, garden hose, tent poles, rubber gloves and barbecue tongs. And sundry other implements that might be useful to dislodge a creature with forked tongue, no feet and a desire to beguile maidens wearing fig leaves.
Maybe nothing at all is going on. But I have to at least appear effective. I put on my best Bob Vila expression and stride purposefully back the motor vehicle, trying to look like I am heavily laden with testosterone.
The door is still open and lo and behold what do I see? Shyly peeking out of the fender recess, is the cutest coyest little lady eastern milksnake that ever met my gaze. She has reddish-brown and white skin in a beautiful black outlined pattern, almost like a clingy sexy body necklace. She is only as big around as my thumb and I swear she is wearing eye shadow and winking at me. Maybe she wants to use the car antenna to give me a miniature pole dance.
But as I approach, zip -- she demurely darts back inside the dark bowels of the fender.
So now I have two problems. The snake in the car and the little woman’s obvious exaggeration. I decide to try and deal with the former and leave the latter till later. Much later. In my vocabulary and this marriage humor is a verb, not a noun.
Okay, the car is built on what is called in gearhead vernacular, a “unibody.” It becomes instantly evident that the nooks, crannies, drain holes, and hollow frame members of said unibody is a marvelously sisyphean labyrinth for a small snake to hide in. I’m less than clueless here. Time to call upon trained professionals.
And sure enough, after some furious and frantic phone calling it is determined that yes, Virginia, our own home town has its native grown version of Crocodile Dundee, a naturalist-type person who actually specializes in snakes -- called a herpetologist.
So later that day Mr. Snake Charmer arrives. He’s equipped with an impressive array of prongs, probes, and proboscides to help get the damn critter out of the car. He pokes, he prods, he postulates. He crawls in and under and around and all over the vehicle. He even manages to somehow stand upside down inside the engine compartment. He seems to disappear, inside and under the car for what seems like a good half hour.
I am thinking about sending in a spelunker search party when he finally emerges, anointed with a crown of tire dust, motor oil, chipmunk droppings, deermouse hair, gypsy moth silk and half eaten acorns. No thorns as far as I can tell.
He says there is good news and bad news.
Good news first. He has located and identified what is in our car.
The bad news is that there are not one but two milksnakes slithering around in there.
The smaller is a female in the snake equivalent of estrus. And the big one is a male in hot pursuit. If they are successful in – ahem -- their endeavors -- we may have snake eggs and later snake babies by the dozens – inside the car.
Doctor Dundee’s affect is calm and understatement. So, it gets my attention when he says the snake is unusually big. I ask how big and he says the biggest he has ever seen. At least as big around as my forearm. Hmm. Now where have I heard that before?
Okay that solves the second problem I had. But doubles the first.
He says that Mr. and Mrs E. Milksnake generally like a dark, cozy, undrafty cave to set up housekeeping. The unmistakable implication is to make the car as unlike that as possible. He leaves us with that advice, without being able to get the snakes out.
The next few days sees a flurry of activity that can be best described as an automotive strip tease. I remove the hood, both front fenders, both fender liners, the cowl, the bumper, both front wheels, the air dam, and thing else that will come off without sawing, drilling cutting, welding or imploding a small nuclear device. I am even able to cork screw the entire dash board out. The place looks like a cross between a junkyard and an auto body shop. There are fasteners, connectors, screws, bolts, parts, stepped-on chewing gum, torn out pieces of hair, grease sodden bandaids, all strewn on the driveway like a pack rat’s carpet. The remainder of the car sprouts dozens upon dozen of labels, tags, stickies, post-its and notes for the assembly -- which will hopefully be less than a decade hence. There are 59 electrical wire reconnections to be done, alone
I flush and apply everything I can reach with animal repellent, liquid fence, moth crystals, cold water, hot water, compressed air, bug spray, room deodorant. I blow a yacht horn into all the recesses until I discover on the internet that all snakes are essentially deaf. I am too now. The internet also informs me that – such is our great good fortune — that in these parts milk snake grow to the largest specimens on the planet – well in excess of six feet long.
Time passes. I use it fruitfully to excise a warren of mouse nests, dropping depots, seed caches and tinkle trails that festoon the underside of the dashboard like a map of Haedes. The hulk that was our car gathers tree pollen, leaf miners, spider webs, pine needles and the general detritus that nature bestows on, and bedecks, immobile objects. I schlep to shopping via feet, bicycle and old truck.
Then one day I catch a break. My neighbor calls, greatly excited and agitated . He says he has spotted a rattlesnake in his back yard. Do I want to take a look?
By the time I arrive breathless and harried, the suspicious serpent is gone. But, he has a photo. There lo and behold on his computer screen is a vivid image of a snake. It is clearly not a rattlesnake. I have personal history with these pit vipers from my youth in New York State. But it does look strangely familiar. Then it hits me. It is a very large eastern milksnake.
Okay under the premise that the hill my neighbor and I live on is not big enough for two large milksnakes, I come to a reckless assumption. My former snake is now his snake. And safely several large lots away.
I begin to slowly, gamely, gingerly, carefully reassemble the 3D jigsaw puzzle taking up space in our driveway.
The service manuals come out. The pile of tools grows. There are impromptu visits to AutoZone, Auto Palace and Walmart by the score. Blue language hangs heavily in the air. Deities and devils alike are invoked. Blood sweat and tears emanate. There is prying, coaxing, prodding, screwing, pushing, levering, jimmying, praying. I even bring out the sacred Bronson rock. There is cogitation, agitation, rumination, frustration, machination. There is much ado.
By some miracle it eventually all comes together, and works, and starts. In fact the fender to fender gaps have been improved over the original. Our car never will never look like a Lexus, but it is better than stock. I feel like miracle Mako-man.
The next morning I start to take this reconstructed bag of bolts for a shake down cruise. It is hot and I turn the air conditioner on full. I hear a familiar buzz. The blower is running fast, but is it out of balance. This has happened before. The imbalance is because there is something in the revolving blower cage that is not supposed to be there.
This I can deal with more easily. I drop the blower body (just two screws) and sure enough, there is a mouse in the cage. Dead as door nail.
Now I would have never imagined I would happy to see, indeed welcome, this aggravating malodorous rodent interloper into our clean, sane, button-down and organized life (ha, ha). But I realized, if the mouse was dead and uneaten, then there could not possibly be any snake at all in the environs. Here was a tasty ideal serpent meal, free and ready for the asking. No takers.
So that is the happy ending of this reptilian recital. One dead mouse. Of course, I do have a tortuous tortured timing-belt tale to tell…for another time…
P.S. The ex-wife actually wanted this car. I let her have it. And, I let her have it.
