I spent the evening unpacking boxes of books. So I had an armload of flattened cardboard that I was tossing into the dumpster. But just as I was about to compress the boxes I had tossed onto the heap, out off the corner of my eye I saw something moving through the garbage. I looked closer and there he was -- at least 5 feet long -- the longest brown tree snake I've seen since arriving on Guam.
I thought about grabbing him by the "tail" -- the non-venomous end. But what would I do after I got him and he wanted to constrict around my hand and arm?
I ran into the house and grabbed my machete.
He was just slithering over the edge of the rusted refuse box as I returned. I took a quick whack and got him somewhere on the tail-end. The snake was stunned. But as I lifted my arm for another blow he came alive and dropped to the ground off the far side of the dumpster. Within two seconds he was gone into the jungle.
Now that I know where he likes to eat dinner I'll keep an eye out for him. I'll also be slower to jump on top of the trash heap for one of my famous compression stomps.
1 comment:
Holy cow--"Guam is one of the areas with the highest snake density in the world (an estimated 2,000 snakes/km²)" [Wikipedia].
Snakes just give me the willies. I grew up in Louisiana where we had lots of snakes. I've had water moccasins crawl over my bare feet when I was a kid and not paying attention.
An occasional night mare I have as an adult is that I'm back home at the house I grew up in in Louisiana, mowing the lawn barefoot and suddenly I realize I'm surrounded by snakes on all sides.
It never occurs to me in the dream that the lawnmower itself would be a pretty good weapon in just such a situation.
Since moving to Kentucky, I haven't seen that many snakes. However, our current home was built in 2003 on what had been a pear orchard. Evidently, one of the snakes that had been used to roaming free once crawled into our house. My wife screamed and came to get me she she saw it in our hallway, and because of that we couldn't find it after it crawed into the room with all of our bookshelves! That night we slept fully clothed afraid of a snake in the bed.
However, a few days later I saw it and grabbed the snow shovel (it was summer, but the snow shovel was somehow handy) and sliced him quite into. By the time I had a chance to examine him, I saw it was only a garter snake and it would have been safe enough for me to pick him up and toss him outside. I felt bad about that, but when there's a snake in the house, I just don't take too much time to stop and think about it!
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