Snake’s alive in kiss-off to starry, quiet Irma night
The eye of Hurricane Irma passed 20-some miles to the west of us, but we still got the dirty side of the storm. Trees cracked and fell all around us. Our tall old oak fell on the neighbor’s back bedroom; his oak crashed on his neighbor to the west; then came the domino effect down the block until they all sat down — duck, duck, goose.
First night after Irma, in the pitch dark, there was dead silence, stars overhead, the smell of pot drifting in the air from a hippie’s house, and I’m thinking: Hey, this ain’t so bad — kind of romantic. Then the generators rumbled to life — thrumm thrum duddda dudda duddd RRRRRRRRR — first to the left of me at Estels’, then to the right of me at the house with the gnome garden.
We couldn’t close the windows to escape the noise because we needed the breeze, with skeeters buzzing beyond duct-tape-repaired screens. Outside were rats, armadillos, a stray Lhasa Apso Ricky running AWOL, raccoons, possums. And an enduring roar of generators — as if every riding lawn mower in the neighborhood cranked to life at once — goodbye, romantic and starry night.
When I pointed out our ancestors lived without AC for thousands of years, neighbors nicknamed me the Neanderthal — after all, I did wash up from the rain spout in my flip-flops and swim trunks in the backyard, all the while brewing cowboy coffee on a campfire.
My wife, Dawn, stood guard with a shotgun after I told her looters would probably come at night. She insisted she wanted to target the black racer (the snake), we’d nicknamed George. I tried without success to convince her that George is a nonvenomous Florida black snake, the type that keeps down moles, rats and mice.
When three truckloads of Christian volunteers (Northland Church, impressive) zoomed up, fresh back from helping Texans recover from flooding, I thought, “Uh-oh.” But they hopped out and used a chain saw to get the monster oak off the back of a neighbor’s house.
I worked security at a banking software company in Lake Mary, where many residents still don’t have power. Yet people are out, cleaning up debris, getting sunburned and dirt under their fingernails. At least, power is coming back much quicker than it did when Hurricane Charley hit us in 2004. But mountains of waterlogged trash still clog the streets.
In the middle of all this, Dawn had her cataract surgery. Afterward, she told me sees snakes everywhere. And she’d still like to get George.
We now know all of our neighbors. Nice folks, really (fingers crossed).
We’re grateful to have survived.
Peace be with you.
It was as if every riding lawn mower in the neighborhood cranked to life at once.