I hope that everyone had a wonderful Mothers Day! The Mom's on the receiving end, and the rest of us on the giving end... We were given a peculiar/exciting/frightening gift this Mother's Day!
We invited a few families over for dinner Sunday, and Sheri's brother Steve and his wife Jessica were also in town. After dinner, while working on desert - one of our visitors leans over to Steve and says "Hey - is that a lizard on the cupboard?" Steve replied "No... it looks more like a toy snake" Steve then walks over to the cupboard and gives it a little shake... the
toy snake... IT MOVED!!!
That's right - not a fake toy snake but a real snake made its way into the cupboard over the microwave. I jumped up on a stool, and started to pull all the recipe books out of the cupboard trying to find and catch the snake. Once I had about 75% of the books out - I could see him on the left side of the cupboard. Only part of his body was showing - someone handed me the tongs we used to grill our chicken and steaks earlier and said "here catch him with this". I'm not really scared of snakes - but I had visions of this thing striking at me as soon as I grabbed him with the tongs.
With a plastic water piture in one hand, and barbecue tongs in the other - I pinched the part of the body I could see - and sweet success! I picked him up - ala a wussy version of the crocodile hunter and dropped him in the water piture. I vaguely remember screaming children, frantic women, and a few men laughing in the background - but I was in the zone, so didn't really pay too much attention to them.
The snake was deposited in Cade's old lizard aquarium - which conveniently was on the back porch all set up with sand and rocks from the last lizard he captured. Sheri and company scoured the Internet trying to identify the snake, while Steve, Shawn and I took down the microwave to see where he could have come in from, and what I was going to do to make sure it
never happened again...
He got in through the hole in the wall where the microwave vents outside. I covered the hole with mesh wire, and spray foam - then put the microwave back. According to
http://www.reptilesofaz.com/herp-snakes.html it looks like its either a VARIABLE SANDSNAKE or a SONORAN SHOVEL-NOSED SNAKE. I emailed the pics below to an expert at the University of Arizona, but haven't heard back from him. I'm sure he has more important things to do than cater to whiny scardy cats with little snakes in their homes...
We aren't sleeping as well these days (by we, I mean they - I'm sleeping just fine in my cozy hotel room in California, while my family sleeps in the snake infested home back in AZ). We are hoping that the shock wares off - like it did after we killed our first black widow. We now kill 20-50 black widows per year, and its just like any other spider...
We really can't find much to complain about living in southern Arizona - we really love it here, but I guess I can complain about the Spiders and Scorpions and Snakes Oh My!
The worst part - during the night - somehow he found a way to escape from the aquarium... so we never even got to take him out to the desert and let him go. He might be making his way back to the microwave as we speak... good thoughts.... good thoughts.... breathe in - breathe out - good thoughts good thoughts...
BLOG UPDATE: Posted Friday - May 16th. Below is the e-mail chain from a different snake expert (the U of A guy never wrote back).Hi Joe,
Sure, glad to help. That's actually a Long-nosed Snake (Rhinocheilus lecontei). They are significantly larger than all three of the species you mentioned. They do have a similar color pattern though.
John
On May 15, 2008, at 6:37 PM, Cluff, Joseph SPT 2403 wrote:
John – we caught this snake in our house. We live just south of Tucson, AZ. We are pretty sure it’s either a:
VARIABLE SANDSNAKE Chilomeniscus stramineus
SONORAN SHOVEL-NOSED SNAKE Chionactis palarostris
However – we still think there might be a possibility that it is a:
SONORAN CORALSNAKE Micruroides euryxanthus
Can you take a look at these pictures and let me know what you think? Thanks!
Joe
The good news - its non venemous. The bad news - he was just a baby... so next year we might find a huge snake in the house... good thoughts.... good thoughts.... breathe in - breathe out - good thoughts good thoughts...
