Snake Stories

 

Brian Kristal of Reptile Wonders, photo by Doug Bishop

"Yesterday, we had snakes at the library,” Conditioner Woman says as she bustles around her stuff strewn all over the locker room bench. We’d both just gotten out of the pool here at Kennedy High and then the shower. She hadn’t asked me for conditioner today, but I’d kept it under wraps, taking it into the toilet with me to prevent theft.

            She’d asked me about teaching. If it was busy. I’d told her not yet. It’s just the first week. She then launched into her Snake Story.

            “Did the snakes read from the snake books?” I asked, laughing.

            She didn’t glance up at me but shook her head. “No, but that’s a funny idea. What happened was that this Snake Expert came into the library yesterday and brought with him four snakes that he told a bit about to the kids. One was a poisonous snake. One was harmless. One was very large. Etc.”

            I thought about how I had always liked snakes. And then remembered the time in Santa Cruz when Owen Hill and I lived across the street from the Fruit Factory and our cat, Gus, had caught a snake. We’d come home from somewhere and seen him in the driveway. Tossing something up into the air. The something writhing about and then falling. Then the cat picking it up and tossing it up again. When we’d gotten closer, we saw that it was a little green and yellow snake. “Looks like just a gardner snake,” Owen had commented.

            “Is it gardner or garter?” I’d asked.

            “Gardner, I think you know what a garter is.”

            I lifted my pants leg up, displaying a tan shapely calf, laughing.

            But what to do with the poor snake that the cat was playing with? Was it even still alive?

            “GUS!!!” I hollered, “STOP it!”

            He ignored me as only a cat can. I moved a little closer to see if I could tell if the snake were alive still or not. But part of me was a little creeped out. Snakes. They are inherently creepy, right? A Christian Cultural sinister devil.

            Owen shook his head as the cat stopped and started chewing on the snake, now lying lifeless on the driveway. “I think we’re too late.”

            “Should we take it away from him?” I asked. “I mean, will eating it make him sick?”

            “Nah, it’s protein. Let him have his dinner.”

            I had been dubious but then again, I didn’t want to pick up a dead snake either, so I’d followed Owen into the apartment to start our own dinner, snake free.

            Today, then, when Conditioner Woman mentioned the snakes and how much the kids liked them, I thought about how, yeah, this makes sense. Kids like creepy stuff.

            “The snake guy had a few of the kids volunteer to hold the snakes. And one kid, he had him close his eyes, and then he placed a huge, beautiful lizard in the kid’s arms.”

            I wanted to ask what the kid’s reaction was, but she had turned to announce the Snake Story to the next woman waiting in the wings: “Yesterday, we had snakes at the library.”
            “Snakes?”

            “Yes, snakes….”

            I dug around in my swim bag for my brush to tackle the tangles before it was time to leave. “Just to let you ladies know, KIDS ARE COMING INTO THE LOCKER ROOM SOON!” one of the lifeguards anounnced, stomping across the cement floor to check the showers for dead bodies.

            Or snakes?

            I once saw a snake coming out my shower, but hell, that’s another story.

Finishing the detanglining procedure, I threw my brush back in my bag and gathered up all my stuff to throw in too.

            “I bet the kids loved the snakes….” echoed in the room.

            Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I hurried out of the locker room. Outside the facility kids were swarming for summer pool camp.

            I thought about snakes at the pool. How much fun that would be. Throwing them in the water and letting them chase all the kids. The fear. The screaming. The hilarity.

            Maybe next summer.

            Snakes at the Pool.

            Now that would be a story!