That Time Being An Adult Meant Coaxing A Snake Out Of A Tree

Spoiler warning: My life is a hot mess.

Hi, I’m Sid—or Sidney—and playing tug o’ mouse is just thing that’s crazy about my life. Someone lied to be when they said there would be this grand day when I knew how to adult. I’m 31, I own a house, I’m a step-mom, there are animals and humans who depend on me, I run my own business. And I do not have this whole adulting thing down.

A point that so wonderfully illustrates just now not together I am happened a few weeks ago. Our family has a two year old corn snake as a pet. Her name is Meeple. She’s amazingly friendly, chill, and doesn’t mind hanging out with us. I’m pretty sure she thinks she can hide in my hair half the time. Hey, she’s kind of pink…

The temperature had dipped here in Texas and at a glance I realized Meeple’s tank was too cold. Ideally she’s kept at around 80 degrees, so I flipped her heaters on high and went about my business.

Except…

We never saw her.

She wasn’t in her normal spots.

The whole tank was just…empty.

After work we rolled up our proverbial sleeves and went digging around in the substrate in her tank. Sometimes Meeple will burrow down into the dirt on the bottom of her habitat to get really close to the under-tank heating pad. But she wasn’t there either.

Cue my mild hysteria. The snake is gone. We have cats. The house’s crawl space is all of five feet away from where her tank was. I have just ensured the death of our beloved family pet. The one animal we can all agree on that we like. And I’ve probably done something to let her out.

It’s about this time that my boyfriend starts laughing.

What the heck is so funny? I’m getting ready to sing a dirge, light a pyre, mourn the loss of our beautiful girl. And he’s laughing?

This is when my boyfriend turns the fake bonsai tree in her tank upside down and points at a small opening into the side of the thing.

She has burrowed her way…inside…a plastic tree…

OMG.

What?

Are you kidding me?

My. Life.

This is bad news for a couple reasons. A) We have no idea how to get her out. B) She’s about to shed so it means she’s freaking blind. C) What the heck, snake???

We let her be for about twelve hours. Long enough for us to hatch a plan. And this is where I had to laugh and see a few nuggets of gold life experience.

In our daily lives we have problems. Maybe not snakes stuck in bonsai trees problems, but stuff happens. Undeniably, un-explainable, crazy weird stuff happens. And what the heck are you going to do? I mean, no one gave me a handbook for how to coax a snake out of where she’s not supposed to be just like I never got my shiny, pretty adulting handbook.

It’s times like these I really want to be a kid, and that’s not a bad thing. Because, what do kids do?

• If a kid can do it. They’ll do it. I’m sure we’ve all had our beloved children redecorate a wall before…because they could.
• If a kid can’t do it they’ll ask someone who can. How many times have you or I or some stranger been asked to tie shoes, open milk bottles and reach things in high places?
• If a kid can’t do it, and there isn’t someone who can, they’ll try anyway. Sometimes we have to be ready and willing to fall on our faces. Because it’s just how things are.

To wrap up this little tale of hilarity, we solved the blindness problem by using the scent of her dinner (I’ll be vague for those squeamish readers) to lay a trail for how to get out of her plastic prison. We then set the tree over a plastic bin so Meeple would have to lower herself a good 8-10 inches to reach said meal (spoiler: at this time she was a good 36 inches long…can you see the problem here?). And then we waited.

Like so much in life, waiting happened.

And happened.

And happened.

But eventually the little garbage disposal poked her head out and slowly lowered herself toward the smell of dinner…

And snatched it up and tried to go back inside the freaking tree.

At this point the boyfriend had hold of the tree, I grabbed the feeding tongs and held onto dinner…and we proceeded to play tug o’ mouse.

Meeple might have won the tug o’ mouse, but we did manage to convince her to leave the tree, which just goes to show—not all solutions are simple and not all fixes easy.

I think I need to go scrub the kitchen down again now. *shudders*