My husband and I had just completed a cross-country drive from Versailles, Ky., back to our adopted hometown of Seattle. Most of the boxes we moved back out to Seattle had been in storage for the best part of the last four years, the last part of which was in a barn on my parents’ property in the middle of thoroughbred-horse country in the Bluegrass State.
Some boxes — the “we can go through them later at our leisure” category — we just put in the basement. The “stuff we’ll need sooner” boxes got placed into the dining and living rooms, for easier unpacking. We made a decent start and decided to accept an invitation for dinner at a friend’s place.
When we woke the next morning, I sat up in bed. Something on the floor caught my eye, and as my gaze trailed the electrical cord of the television, I saw it: a snakeskin, freshly shed.
I nudged my husband. He followed my shaking pointer finger and sat up a little straighter in bed.
“Don’t move. Stay right there. I’ll be right back.”
He ran down the stairs, and I heard him rummaging around in the kitchen. In just a moment, he returned with a broom and a flashlight and began investigating behind the dresser, following the snakeskin to see if there was a snake nearby.
The broom handle gingerly pulled out each empty drawer, with no sign of the skin’s previous owner to be found. Every open bag lying on the floor, the pile of clothes left from the previous evening — everything we could find that might be a tempting snake hideout was poked and prodded with the handle of that broom.
The only other sign of the invader was a little pile of blackish-brown muck underneath an end table.
“What is that?” I ask.
“Snake poop,” my husband said with certainty.
We called the Seattle Police’s non-emergency number and were told that it doesn’t have the manpower to send someone to help us locate it.
We called Animal Control and were told that it doesn’t deal with things inside houses.
We were on our own.
The stowaway snake
Some local friends informed us that they’d seen our Facebook posts and had taken the liberty of contacting an herpetologist friend of theirs, Peter Miller, who works at the Woodland Park Zoo.
We sent Peter a photo of the snakeskin, and he assured us that, as far as he can tell, the snake was not venomous. He wasn’t available until later in the afternoon, though, so we decided to go on — with special caution — with our unpacking.
My husband had the idea to set up a box with a space heater inside, upstairs in the master bedroom, in the hopes that the snake might be enticed to snuggle up with it. We don’t have central air conditioning, but I turned the furnace fan on, in case the snake was exploring the ductwork.
We then got busy, all the while trying to figure out where the snake came from and how he got into the house. Then my husband went to a box labeled “miscellaneous household.” Inside, among the flowerpots and other sundries, was another, older piece of snakeskin that looked exactly like the one in our bedroom. We had a stowaway.
A couple of hours later, my husband went upstairs to check his snake trap. As he came back down the stairs, I heard him gasp and say, “There it is!”
I went out into the hallway as the snake slowly made his way out of our kids’ bedroom. He got interested in the vacuum cleaner sitting in the corner and started coiling around its base.
I hastily emptied out a plastic storage container and brought it out into the hallway as my husband used his broom handle to slowly nudge the vacuum cleaner away from our uninvited guest.
Luckily for us, he was interested in the plastic storage bin and started to slither into it. My husband took the opportunity to grab a piece of cardboard and nudged the rest of the snake’s body into the bin. He quickly turned it right-side-up and slapped the lid down. We then immediately took some photos and updated our Facebook pages.
We decided to call him Bluegrass.
Heading back home
My husband promptly called Peter, the herpetologist, to boast of his extreme snake-wrangling skills. We asked if the Woodland Park Zoo might be interested in taking Bluegrass off our hands. We’re told that Bluegrass is a black rat snake, and while it is not a species native to this area, it’s not exactly exotic enough to put on display.
Peter told us that the best thing for the snake would be to send him back to where he came from (snakes are territorial, it turns out, and tend to return to the same areas over and over again throughout their lives).
Peter showed up a few hours later, with a canvas bag and a plastic bucket with a lid. He said he has consulted a snake-breeder friend, who gave him the information for a shipping company that specializes in lizards.
Bluegrass will be snuggled up inside the canvas bag (cinched tightly with a zip tie), and placed inside a box cushioned with packing peanuts.
When he arrives back at my parents’ house, my father will simply take the package out to the barn, lift the canvas bag out, cut the zip tie and leave Bluegrass to find his way out.
Peter took Bluegrass away to arrange his passage back to Kentucky. FedEx, as it turns out, is the preferred airline for traveling reptiles, in case anyone else needs to know.
LORI FULLER and her family now live in Queen Anne. To comment on this story, write to QAMagNews@nwlink.com.
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