Snakes on a Porch

"Snake."

The one word was pronounced with such measured equanimity that for a second, I forgot to be terrified.  

But only for a second.

It's one thing to see a slinky buddy out in the wild, or outside in our yard.  Or even while pet-sitting for my friend, Becca, whose albino corn snake is an absolute love.  It's another thing entirely when it's on your screened-in lanai and your two-and-a-half year-old is trying to eat it.  It matters not whether you're the mother of a human baby or a feline one--watching your kid trying to play with an as-yet unidentified baby snake strikes fear into the most lion-hearted among us.  Because, as we all know, poisonous baby snakes are ten times more dangerous than their adult relatives.  Baby snakes, it seems, don't understand how much venom to expel because they have no experience, and they figure that if some is good, a LOT is much better.  But back to the story.

The second thing Sean said, after "snake," was "get a cup."  We use cups to catch and take out spiders and moths and giant millipedes and "palmetto bugs."  Not only did a cup seem like an inordinately BAD idea to me, but it also reminded me of that line in Jaws about needing a bigger boat.  

Sure, hon.  How about a cup the size of a 10-gallon bucket?  That should do the trick.

I'm trying to get Cooper off the porch, but he somehow eludes me and ends up back with Sean, attempting to help with the intruder.  I run to grab a plastic cup and our standard card-stock bug-catching postcard.  Feeling pretty insane and inadequate, by the way.  

I remind Sean about said baby-snake-dangerousness.  Sean is unfazed.  

He's also my hero, by the way.  Sean gently covered the petrified snake with the tiny cup, slid the realtor's ad underneath him, and asked me to get the door.  I was way ahead of him.

First we shut the cats up on the lanai.  Then we opened the kitchen door, and Sean took him out the back door, through the garage, all the way to the end of the cul-de-sac, where he gently released him.  He's a better person than I am.  Where the safety of my kitties is concerned, my Zen Buddhism can sometimes go right out the window.  

Luckily, that slippery little guy had Sean in charge instead of me.  Cooper was unharmed and the little snake buddy got to live to fight another day.  We did some research and Sean is convinced he was just a corn snake--a harmless relative of my friend Becca's Mae.  Embarrassingly, I didn't get a close enough look to confirm.  Nor do I have a picture (because I do have some common sense).  All I could see was emergency room visits for either Cooper or Sean or both.

Cooper's still on the porch looking for another buddy to play with.  Bless his little heart.