A slithering tail… or seven?

Kaity Holtman

I’ve decided to finally tell a year-old story that still tends to be the center of many conversations I have with anyone who has heard about our slithering home invaders.

Snakes.

Yes, you read that right.

We have snakes in our 90-year-old house.

But the first snake story is still the best, so that’s the one I’ll tell.

One morning I was almost done getting ready for work. I was in my closet and heard a rustling noise in the kitchen, which happens to be right next to my bedroom.

We’d had mice before, so I assumed that was the case this time, too.

“But,” I thought, “before I go look, I’m going to finish getting ready in case it’s something else.”

I took a step backwards and saw something in front of my refrigerator.

“Ok, that is not a mouse, but I don’t know what it is.”

I put on my jewelry, grabbed my purse and took a closer look.

It was a snake. And that snake was shedding its skin in front of/underneath my refrigerator.

Obviously, I was not about to grab my lunch out of said refrigerator.

I headed out the door and immediately called my husband.

It went something like this:

Me: “There is a snake in my kitchen! Oh my gosh, there is a snake in my kitchen!”

Matt: “I’m at work (in St. Joseph, 45 minutes away from home). What do you want me to do about it?”

Me: “I don’t care, but you better figure it out. I’m not going back in that house until it’s dead and gone.”

Matt: “You should have stayed in there to see where it went.”

Me: “Nope! I’m not staying there.”

Matt: “Ok, I’ll see what I can do.”

So he calls our brother-in-law and his uncle, both neighbors, thankfully.

The brother-in-law made it there first while on the phone with Matt. He saw it stick its head out from behind my oven.

Matt’s uncle then, of course, brought a .22 rifle loaded with birdshot to kill this thing in my kitchen.

They pulled out the oven and trapped it.

One shot, and it was dead.

They kindly put it in an empty pizza box by the trash can, took it outside and put a flower pot on top of it for safe keeping.

And so I could see it when I got home.

That was very kind of them, huh?

It was a four-foot-long black snake.

Lovely.

I remember getting home after work that day and just standing at the bottom of the stairs going into the house. I couldn’t make myself go in.

Luckily, my father-in-law happened to be driving by, stopped, and asked if I wanted him to go in first.

I just nodded, “Yes, please.”

The kicker of this whole story is that two days before this happened, we came home to find things knocked off the top of our refrigerator and soap bottles knocked into the sink. That means that slimy thing was on the same level as where we live our daily lives for at least two days.

Since that time, we’ve had battles with other snakes, ranging from one-foot to almost five-feet in length.

The last six snakes (three more in 2014 and three so far this spring) have all been in the basement, mostly in the laundry room.

And to follow the trend his uncle began, Matt has had to shoot all of them.

Everyone says to me that they don’t know how I do it, or how we stay there.

My response is usually the same each time.

I would have said the same thing, until I realized, you can’t actually just do that when you own the house.

You can’t just move out.

Then those people say, “Well, at least you don’t have mice.”

No, we’re feeding the mice to our snakes.

I’d much prefer mice to snakes, any day.

Give me the mice back.

None of the last six have ever bothered me as much as the first one. And with each one, the Holtman team of snake-hunters we’ve accumulated tells me the same thing.

“We got the hole fixed this time, Kaity. You won’t have any more.”

We’ll see. It’s taken a lot of effort of many Holtman men that I’m very thankful for.

But I don’t know, guys. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I’m not sure I believe you yet.