So We Meet Again, Ye Serpent of Old

It should be recognized up front that Jen Frabott acted boldly above and beyond the call of duty in a desperate time of peril.

Oblivious to the ill-fated direction of last Sunday, I started out by treating it the same as any other day. What I didn't know was that, coiled deep in the shadows of our basement, lurked a terrible, dreadful creature. Fortunately for Jess and me, Tony and Jen, our brother and sister-in-law, respectively, had stopped over to help us drag a roll of carpet down into our basement, where it would probably sit rolled up for the next six months, or until we mustered up the will to lay it down.

With Tony and me struggling on both ends, and the two girls helping with the middle, the carpet roll was finally placed near the east basement wall with the rest of the "so-called" storage. Before heading back up, one of us noticed a stray piece of bungy cord wrapped awkwardly in a strip of duct tape and some dust beneath the basement stairs.

I lunged forward to pick it up, but something - whether it was a sixth sense or divine intervention, I don't know - told me to just hold up a second. Wait a minute, we don't own a bungy cord. My thoughts pieced togther slowly, trying to make sense of the meeting of two worlds seemingly unfit for each other - the world of the domesicated, and that of the razor-teethed, venomous wildlife found only in the Outback or the pages of National Geographic. Tony beat me to the punch. "It's a snake," he said. Yes, that's exactly what it is.

"You can see its tongue," exclaimed Jen. Jess hovered closely behind and around us, as we spent a short time examining the sliver of bungy from a safe distance. It appeared it was stuck and unable to move.

"That's not a snake," said Jess, calmly. Tony, Jen and I had seen the tongue. Jess had not. Silence. No one tried to argue with Jess. She'd find out soon enough. The three of us stood stock still, while Jess took her time sorting out the colliding of the two worlds. At this point, we were all experiencing some form of that age-old fear of snakes, which had been so generously handed down to us from our ancestors in the Garden of Eden.

Now, the fear of snakes may be human nature, but most do their best to hide it if they can. Jess was not one of these. Again, the tongue. It tickled the air. This time Jess saw it. "Snake!" she screamed. "Snake!" she screamed again. "Snakes!" this time she added an "s" to make it plural. "Snakes!" Evidently, as we'd later discover, the sight of one snake turned into a multitude in Jess' mind. In fact, they had already grown 10 feet in length, eaten me, slithered up the basement stairs and swallowed our two children who don't exist, and who she'd quickly imagined us having for the occassion.

Jess' face was red like a turnip and rapidly approaching purple, and every muscle was tensed to the point of popping. I ran up the stairs, fleeing not from the snake but from Jess' bloodcurdling shrills. I ran about the house in search of a broom and a trashcan to sweep the snake into. Once upstairs, Jess' muffled shrieks were still building strength. Poor Jen and Tony were in the basement, trapped between the snake and Jess' screams. Looking back, faced with Jess' mounting insanity, I now see that Jen did what anyone of us would have done in her situation. There was only one way for escape.

It was the sad truth, Jess had completely melted down, uncontrollably surpassing the stage of uselessness and fastly approaching the point of becoming a total hinderance. Jen made a decision. She took one for the team. With bravery demonstrated only in the trenches of warfare, or possibly when ordering up a 10 pack of White Castle slyders a half hour before bedtime, Jen picked up the tape with the snake stuck to it. Calmly, cooly she went upstairs with it, careful to keep her fingers from touching the slithering reptile. Jess, doing what she did best at the moment, followed behind still screaming about snakes.

With one quick motion I opened the door and waved Jen in the general direction of the backyard. Once there, she could quickly toss the snake over the back fence into the overgrown ditch - where all things go we don't want. On the way out, I shut the door behind us, leaving Jess inside to deal with her scream-filled panic by herself.

Tony was already in the backyard throwing the ball with our dog, Phoebe. In the midst of the chaos, Tony at once poured his best efforts into protecting Phoebe from witnessing the going-ons. Phoebe's a very nervous dog.

Right before Jen was about to give the snake a toss, the backdoor opened and out came a brand new Jess. She was smiling. What looked like compassion played in her eyes. And a camera was in her hand. Supposedly she wanted to remember the object that had put her over the edge. "Don't hurt it," Jess said.

What happened alone inside the house, we may never know, but somewhere in that brief span of time she had made up her mind that she and the snake were friends. Jess possessed a brand new attitude toward the creature. She brought out a tupperware container to place the snake in, like a little bed, and then studied it closely, saying she was sad for it.

The snake was so wrapped up in the tape, it was hard to tell where the snake began and the taped ended. No one had the courage to unravel the poor reptile, for that would require a lot of touching it. So after a couple snapshots, the snake and the duct tape went over the fence never to be seen again. We all finally took a deep breath, and Tony assured me that Phoebe would never know about it.

And that was the day Jess learned she was afraid of snakes.