I pondered.
I pondered some more.
I thought about hitting the gas pedal and running into the back of the car, but I forced myself to reconsider.
I brake for snakes, it read, with a website of some kind at the bottom. This person was a lover of snakes. A barbarian at my door.
I thought back to my many run-ins with snakes. Just yesterday morning (sounds like a good start for a song, doesn't it?), I read on Facebook -- that fountain of information and cat and dog videos -- that a couple with a two-year-old were renting a house in somewhere America and they had found 48 small but vicious snakes in the house. The owner apparently was unable to rid the house of snakes. The couple said they had only found one in the room with the infant, and they were considering moving.
Slowly read that last part again. T-h-e-y w-e-r-e c-o-n-s-i-d-e-r-i-n-g. CONSIDERING moving.
I once caught a snake on a fish hook while fishing in the fishless Ponta Creek that roams gently across what was my families' property. I brought the snaking snake home with me and somehow got it into a huge jar that we somehow had in our house. I put the lid on it, cut the line, and proceeded over the next few minutes to watch the snake do snake things. Till I freaked. I took the whole jar back to the creek and threw it at the water, top still on.
I once stepped over a snake apparently sunning itself at my family home in the country. I snaked my way back inside and for the first and only time blew the snake to snake hell (there obviously is no snake heaven). I shot so many times there was nothing left to be scared of. My father came running thinking World War III had begun, which for any thinking person is a war against evil (snakes).Once, as an adult, I came home from work to find a daughter and wife at the front window of our house. They were hollering at me that there was a snake at the front door. Ignoring the opportunity to address door-to-door sales persons as snakes, I took a look. And I freaked. There was a big ol' uh, snake of some ilk at our door. Sounds like a Michael Bay movie, but it was real.
By the way, in all my snake travels not once have I asked for an ID. This notion of good snake and bad snake is like turning Bonnie and Clyde into depression era good guys. Not so, young Jedi. I saw a hoe leaning against the house, which in my experiences is the perfect position for hoes at all times, and I took it. I have no idea exactly what I planned to do with it, but I took it. I then came up with a suitable plan. I edged my car closer to the snake, parked, got out and carefully, slowly, silently edged onto the hood of the car. From there I kinda poked at the sucker. I didn't want to actually hit it with the hoe in case this was the hard-to-find flying snake. I didn't want to make it exceedingly mad in case this was the unique car-climbing snake. You never know what the abilities of a snake are, by the way. I finally hit it. And the dang thing got mad. It lifted its head, which in my experience is an awful, awful thing to observe. No good has ever, ever come from a snake lifting its head, but I digress. It lifted its head and to the absolute relief of at least one of us, it snaked its way very, very quickly out of the area. My wife was upset at my having left a snake to get mad and come back for revenge, but I was quite content with my actions and decisions. I hoped the snake would go tell the family of the man with the hoe on the strange vehicle who let him or her live. Me? I began working on an impromptu For Sale sign for our home.
I recognize that some folks are snake people. I once had a room mate who loved snakes. He had two Boas -- a big sucker and a little one that was mean as the day is long -- and a rattle snake. I couldn't even look at the rattle snake in its glass cage, reminding me constantly of the day my family took me to the zoo and I refused to go into the snake house with screams and tears because I was certain something would happen to the glass and we would be trapped in a large dark "house" with the world of snakes. I told my "room mate" that if any of those snakes ever got out, he was gone. Of course, I would have had a heart attack, so me putting him out actually made no sense. Once, he tried to get me to hold the angry Boa. I petted its tail, and nothing happened. So, he gently handed the Boa to me, it moved, I dropped it and there he went, lifting that dang head in anger. I transported from that spot instantly. Never touched another one.
It has been years since I've been around a snake, at least the animal kind, and I'm grateful for that. It occurred to me, sitting in hot traffic yesterday, that should the occasion ever occur, snake in the road and all, I would not under any circumstances brake for the evil thing.
Unless the vehicle could guarantee me that it would brake and wind up sitting on the creature. And then I would have to come to live in the vehicle, because there would be no way to get out of the car.
The obvious thing, then, is to never brake for snakes. Ever. Never. Nope.
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