Moth balls & Snakes

[j]

As I was sitting around the break room with my fellow Engineers last week, an interesting discussion came up. The topic was snakes. Now I hate snakes with a passion. I think it stems from my early days living with a roommate who had a 10 ft. Boa, and a 9 ft. Python. I have many stories about these snakes but the one that sticks with me is the day we came home from work….went into the “snake room”, and low and behold..the Python was missing. At the time I had a very young Siamese kitten that I imagined would make a great snack for this reptile, We searched the house high and low and could not find it. Try sleeping at night knowing there is a 9 ft Python loose somewhere in the house.

I found the snake the following day while cleaning up after a party when I turned a chair over and there it was….coiled up in the springs spitting and hissing at me.

Anyway..there would be many more snake stories like this one in the 1 ½ years we lived together.

Anyway…back to the topic. One of my co-workers told of finding a large copper head under his house. I never really thought much about it, but now I was. Most of the houses here in the South have crawl space under the house as opposed to a cellar. The heating system is under there and at least once a month you have to go under there and change the filter. It’s dark, dirty, and never one of my favorite chores but one that has to be done. Now…the thought of snakes under my house had me less enthused. I relayed the story to my wife who shared it with her co-workers.

One of them had heard that snakes positively hate moth balls and they will scatter. They had seen few snakes around and decided to line the perimeter of their property with the moth balls thinking it would drive them away. WRONG..it backfired and when they came home the driveway, the front porch, the walkway were covered with snakes. They scattered inward instead of leaving the property.

Anyway…..I decided there must be something to this moth ball thing so I crawled under the house and proceeded to scatter a box of moth balls everywhere. There were places I couldn’t crawl to easily so I just threw handfuls.

ANOTHER bad idea.

We left to get some dinner and when we came back the smell inside the house just about knocked us over. My wife told me to get under that house and get those moth balls out of here. I said, “Maybe the smell will fade…can’t we just hold off?” She said, “You can’t leave those under there..this baby might get sick”. I hung my head and gathered up my flashlight and snake club (an old 9 iron).

Two hours later my job was done as I had to crawl on my belly in places, with a flashlight, locating every little mothball I had flung to every corner of that snakepit. Now I didn’t see a single snake, but all I could think about was if there had been any snakes under there,,,did I piss them off, and what was I going to do, crawling on my belly when I came face to snakehead with one?

I hate snakes, more now than ever.