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Why I'm a City Girl
By Tiffany on 15 August 2006 terribly earlyCategory: Family
One word: nature. The great outdoors can be very scary when you think about all of the bugs and critters living in there. Well yesterday I felt like I was living in an episode from Animal Planet.
We spent a wonderful weekend on Possum Kingdom Lake with our friends Heather and Brian and – collectively—with our three kids. In fact it was so much fun that even though the guys left Sunday afternoon, Heather and I decided to spend another day out with the kids. Big mistake!
We put the kids to bed Sunday night, and then I looked at Heather and said, “If you need any help in the night feel free to get me”. She has a six-week-old baby that hasn’t been sleeping well.
At 4:45am my bedroom door flew open. Heather is standing there looking panic stricken and motioning for me to follow her. I jumped up and ran to the kitchen with her. A huge snake is on the floor in the kitchen. A snake is in the same house that we are in with our three children!!! Why couldn’t this happen when the guys were there? Then Heather pointed outside where I realized the snake was only half of our problem.
Heather filled me in on what had happened. She got up to feed the baby at 3:30am, but she left all of the lights off in the house. She wanted baby Jessica to think it was still nighttime. Just outside the French doors, she saw a skunk walking around the deck. Heather had put a bag of trash just outside the door the night. She never imagined it might attract animals. After all, we are city girls.
Well, the skunk thought he had just won the lottery when he saw the trash bag. He jumped up on the bag and started to rip open the bag. After she got the baby back to sleep, Heather knew she had to do something about the skunk. She thought she should throw out some food in the opposite direction form the bag to distract the skunk long enough to bring the bag in the house. She flipped the light on in the kitchen to grab some bread, and realized she was one step away from a huge snake! She had been pacing the kitchen floor for 30 minutes trying to soothe the baby while a snake was right there. This is when she woke me up in a panic.
I am terrified of snakes. The first thing I did when I saw it was go off to the bathroom. I knew I would wet myself if it moved toward us at all. Then Heather and I discussed our options. There really weren’t any. The only doors in the house are the French doors, which we couldn’t get out because the skunk had his back end touching the door eating the trash. We knew we had to get rid of the skunk first. We cut on the lights and started banging on the door to scare the skunk, but he put his tail straight up and kept eating. He made it clear he wasn’t leaving. The snake had been pretty mellow before we cut on all the lights, but then he started to slither around.
We put blankets under the doors to the bedrooms so the kids were safe, and then we called Heather’s husband. He told us we needed to get the snake out. We had already figured that out. He didn’t offer to drive 2 hours to come rescue us. He suggested spraying the snake with Raid, making a lot of noise, and he’d run for the open door. He had no suggestion on what to do about he skunk.
Then we called Heather’s brother in law who lives only 30 minutes away. He was headed to the hospital to do an operation and couldn’t come. He thought the Raid idea sounded good.
Heather and I thought spraying the snake with Raid would make him angry, and the only thing worse than a 3-foot snake in your house is an angry 3-foot snake in your house. At this point the snake had climbed all over the kitchen, climbed up the water cooler, had a drink, slithered on top of the kitchen counter, and relaxed in the sink.
The kids were up at this point so we grabbed breakfast foods while the snake was in the sink. The kids wanted to see the snake so we gave them a quick look, and then we locked them in the bedroom with food and cartoons.
I told Heather I wasn’t physically capable of trying to get the snake out of the house. All we had was a broom, a can of Raid, and a toy BB gun. We didn’t know if the snake was poisonous or not. The new plan was if help hadn’t come by sunrise we were taking the kids out of the bedroom window and running for the car.
Sunrise was still almost a half hour away, so we did what any city girl would do. Call 911. This was after all an emergency. It took some convincing, but finally a dispatcher called us back at 5:30 and said, “If you really need him we have a guy willing to come out there.” We explained we were an hour passed really needing somebody to come help us.
Justin from the Brazos River Authority arrived at 6:15 with a long hoe. He scared the skunk away and pulled the trash away so the skunk wouldn’t come back. Then we let him in the house. This man is our hero. He wrangled the snake, and took it outside. It turned out to be a Bull snake just over 3 feet who was looking for water. There was a lake outside so I don’t know why he needed to come indoors for water. He wouldn’t kill the snake since it wasn’t poisonous.
Knowing the snake and skunk were outside somewhere we decided to load the kids up early and head back to the city. What a morning! The kids thought all of the wildlife was so exciting. In the chaos we managed to get a picture of the skunk and snake so that people would believe our story. Needless to say, that was my first and last trip to Possum Kingdom Lake.
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From one city girl to another – calling 911 would have been the FIRST thing I would have done. Sadly the only wildlife comparison I can offer was when a bird flew down my supposedly-closed chimney and took a tour around my apartment (pooping all the way, of course). Fortunately he found his way out the patio door before I could get my hands on the phone :-)
Good work, girls.
— Kayla Aug 15, 09:18 AM #Good thinking! If the men would have been there ..... you may have had snake bitten, skunk stinking men, with raid all over them!! What are the chances of both of those things happening??? Don’t get too afraid of the outdoors, they may never happen again!
— Susan Aug 17, 10:09 PM #Take Care!