Protecting against uninvited visitors

One of the funniest things I have ever seen, at least in retrospect, was my husband’s reaction when he found a snake in his tennis shoe Thursday.

Imagine if you will a man roughly the size of a house losing his mind over something that was no longer than your hand.

I had Gideon on the bed getting him ready for day care, when Luke came in the front door (after I had thought he had left for work) and told me to get Gideon to the living room.

Without question, I scooped our son up and headed to the front of the house. But before I could get out of the room, Luke had flipped our queen size bed, mattress and all, and was shining his cellphone flashlight looking for something.

When I asked him what in the world he thought he was doing, he only said, “There was a snake in my shoe.”

He quickly went back to his search, though I was still oblivious as to what he was looking for.

When I asked for clarification, he explained that when he got outside he felt something moving in the heel of his shoe and when he pulled it off, a brown snake emerged. He then explained that his shoes had been under the bed and he was making sure the snake didn’t have any friends waiting down there for us. You see, our air conditioning filter is in the floor of our home and we put our bed over the grate to prevent any accidents that could occur from it. I’m sure that is where our little friend entered, unknown to us.

He then dragged me outside to see it. The snake in question was the size of a night crawler earthworm, brown in color and not quite dead. I agreed with Luke that it looked like a baby snake.

He reminded me of a brown garden snake, and although I was willing to bet he was harmless, I snapped a picture and texted the one person who would know and reply quickly, our outdoors expert known as the huntress, Katie Meade.

She let me know that he was actually almost full grown and said he was a prairie brown snake. He wouldn’t harm us and actually eats bugs and lizards from our yard. She also said he was more than likely coming in to warm up from a cool night outside.

I kind of feel bad that Luke killed it (although to be fair, Luke hates snakes and I’ve never seen my husband quite so white in the face). Snakes don’t bother me, I actually quite like them. It was just living its life and happened to be in the wrong shoe at the wrong time.

We will be looking into something to deter the creatures from coming to call on us. If you have any suggestions, please send me an email or call me at the office.