As pests go, snakes don’t cause much property damage, but there is no reliable way to stop them from hanging out and terrorizing you.
I have always hated snakes. They, unfortunately, love Shed Mahal, the renovated horse shed where I began working remotely during the pandemic. One day, a snake slithered across the rug and scared the bejesus out of me. Another snake visit happened several days later. Then they started showing up daily.
Exterminator Guy said the proven solution was a “snake gate.” It is a device that lets the snakes check out of the crawl space they colonized under the Shed but not back in, like a Roach Motel® in reverse. He sealed up the holes in the Shed Mahal’s foundation using an expanding foam-type stuff, installed the gate in the main hole I’d seen the little buggers use and bid me “bonne chance.”
Two weeks and zero snake sightings later, Guy returned victorious, removed the snake gate, and filled the final hole with the expanding foam-type stuff. I returned to my desk, one eye constantly scanning the re-caulked baseboards for snake incursions.
A week passed. No snakes. I began to relax.
Then the smell started—the aroma, I believed, of a village of dead snakes. It appeared that the snake gate wasn’t the one-way passage to snake freedom we were sold, but instead confined the entire Snake Family under the Shed to die a slow and extremely smelly death.
Fortunately, both the smell and my guilt were gone within a week.
Then one day, I saw it: the biggest Daddy Snake I have ever seen. It was lying in the grass, watching me as I approached the Shed. He was about 6 feet away from the door. Would he lunge? Could he lunge? I paused.
“Sorry about the family,” I said.
Then, I swear on all things holy, the snake gave me stink eye.
Snake gates weren’t gonna cut it. I needed the big guns.
I phoned J. Whitfield “Whit” Gibbons, one of the world’s leading snake experts and professor emeritus at the University of Georgia, a state that knows what’s up when it comes to snakes. I described my predicament and asked what more I could do to stop what was clearly shaping up to be some sort of a coordinated assault on Shed Mahal by the snake community to exact retribution for their blood sacrifice.
“There is no way you can seal up a foundation tight enough to keep them out or in. That wasn’t snakes you were smelling,” Dr. Gibbons said between snorts. “It was probably mice. Those snakes are still in there for sure. They can go for months without eating, so why would they die? The record for a snake in captivity is two years without any food. Why are you afraid of them?”
“They are snakes,” I said. “In my office.” (...)
The conversation proving less than fruitful for my purposes of total snake annihilation, I called Steve A. Johnson, an associate professor and snake expert at the University of Florida. I asked him what I should do.
“Move your office back into the main house,” said Dr. Johnson. “You’re asking for it. A horse barn is a perfect place for wildlife.”
“Really?” I asked. “I should just give up?”
“Ya. Or you could stay, and if you see the same snake twice, you can name it. We have to learn to live with wildlife. They’re part of our environment. They’re just trying to make a living and get by just like we are. We have our spaces and they have theirs and usually everyone can get along when everyone stays on their side of the wall.
“But have you thought about putting up a sign that says ‘No snakes allowed in here?’ ” he asked through a barely stifled giggle.
They say that you must be the change you want to see in the world. So I went back to working in the Shed with my new legless, armless office-mates, Fluffy, Snuggles and Jeff. I treat them as unpredictable, potentially dangerous pets, or relatives whose political views differ from mine. I am learning to accept differences that once felt insurmountable and to live in peace. But I swear if one of them slithers over my feet, I’m burning Shed Mahal to the ground.
by Kris Frieswick, WSJ | Read more:
Image: Christina Spano
