Published Wednesday, May 14, 2008 11:58 AM
Updated Wednesday, May 14, 2008 11:59 AM

 

Fanfare for the Common Man 5/14/08

I don’t do critters


I want to make one thing perfectly clear to whatever potential future mate, life partner, significant other or companion I may encounter in my travels.

In the event of any wildlife encounter, you’re on your own.

It’s every man for himself.

I don’t do critters.

Critters include anything that crawls, slithers, scurries, hangs or flies on four, six, eight or no legs. They creep me out. Chivalry is dead at this point.

Don’t expect me to protect you, save you, or kill it for you. I am nobody’s hero at this point and when you see one scurrying or slithering across the kitchen floor and you jump up on the chair, you best leave room for me because I’m right behind you.

And I won’t be the first one to check to see if the coast is clear, either.

I am a city boy. I don’t do country well, but I’ve lived in the country coming up on 20 years now.

I’m one of those types who expects certain creature comforts and is okay in taking them for granted: water when I turn the faucets, lights when I flip the wall switch and dial tone (or bars) when I pick up the phone.

I would not have survived back in the days of our forefathers.

I don’t camp.

Camping for me is a window unit AC and a TV screen smaller than 19 inches.

I came from the mountains of North Georgia where I have encountered bears, mountains lions, deer, wild boars, foxes, coyotes, opossums, skunks, scorpions, cockroaches and spiders. I moved to the Lowcountry where the possibility of encountering an alligator is quite real, learned what “noodling” means, touched a 60-pound carp and I see those little green lizards skittering around so much that after four months I no longer scream and jump when I see them.

My misadventures involving critters are legendary.

I watched a giant opossum crawl out from under my entertainment center while watching Sportscenter one night.

I wound up devising a trap worthy of Wile E. Coyote to corner and ensnare said beast and the next day when I told my born and raised country neighbor about my opossum encounter, he said, “You let it go? Those make the best stew.”

I have seen spiders the size of my hand lurking in webs up in the corner of the front porch. Upon smacking the spider and web with a broom, the spider was so big it snatched the broom from my hands and smacked back.

The worst for me though, above all the aforementioned misadventures are snakes.

I am just like Indiana Jones. I hate snakes.

Yesterday as I sat out on my patio enjoying the mid-80 degree Lowcountry sunshine and a conversation on the phone, I happened to look down at my feet, stretched out and crossed at the ankles, to see the last foot of a snake slither casually out of sight behind the cedar fence.

I didn’t scream like your baby sister because all air previously contained in my lungs had left suddenly in what sounded like a Darth Vader-Luke-I-am-your-father gasp.

When asked what was wrong, I replied, “Snake.”

Well, snake accompanied by a flurry of adult colorful adjectives I can’t repeat here.

I ran around the fence encircling the patio to see the biggest snake I’d ever seen before in my life not contained behind a pane of glass. Its head was the size of a child’s fist and it was as big around as your arm. As I noted its length it took a hard left turn and slithered through the knothole in the fence.

It was now on my patio.

Eight feet of snake.

I tippy-toed back to my patio as I was barefoot and yes, once upon a time I had one of these bad boys slither across the top of my bare foot.

You don’t think man is descended from monkeys? Have a snake crawl across your bare foot and you’ll be amazed how fast and easily you can climb trees.

As I stood there trying to figure out what to do with this snake on my patio, I realized that having a snake on my patio would soon be the least of my problems.

That’s when the snake slithered up the black hose descending from my air conditioner unit and followed it through the hole in the brick. Inside my house.

This required another volley of colorful adjectives.

“It’s time to move,” I said.

The snake, I found out from Google, was a Yellow Rat snake, a non-venomous constrictor that can reach 72-inches in length when full grown. Well, this snake was big for its age then.

When asked how to get rid of Yellow Rat snakes, the Snakes R Us website replied thusly: “If you encounter a Yellow Rat snake in or under your house just leave them alone. They’ll leave when the food supply runs out.”

Okay, what happens if the food supply never runs out?

I’ll be staying in room 210 at the Holiday Inn until then, thank you very much.

Dan Brown can be contacted at dbrown@berkeleyind.com