Snake Scare

Living in Southern Colorado where the environment is a semi-desert, we are up to our eyeballs in snakes, lizards, rabbits, mice, and prairie dogs. Often we will see a hawk roaming the land for one of its many prey. It's like a smorgasbord out here. My boys are fascinated with the creatures of this land. I could well do without them thank you very much. Thinking of all the snakes that are hiding in my backyard gives me the chills and I recall a particular time in my life when I was totally creeped out by the nasty things. My husband and I were basking in dream land when we were jolted out of our sleep by a hard knock at our apartment door. It was past midnight and Nathanael was just a baby sleeping peacefully in his crib. When my husband opened the door, he was greeted with a formidable policeman. The man informed us both that he got an anonymous call from someone who saw a snake crawl underneath our door. I immediately went into my son's room ready to defeat this slimy foe in case he had dared to venture into my sweet baby's room. I looked into the crib and breathed a sigh of relief to know there wasn't a reptile curling up to my son. Both my husband and I along with the policeman looked around the apartment, but we didn't find anything. The man left and, of course, we did not go straight back to bed. After some more intense looking, my husband was successful in finding the snake. It had curled underneath the heater in our bedroom. To think that the thing had crawled on its belly right past us while we were sleeping gives me the creeps. My husband arms himself to the teeth with gloves and a butcher knife to catch it and dispose of it. As my husband is waging war in the bedroom, I am hovering in the kitchen keeping my back to the front door making sure I do not catch a glimpse of the thing as he carries it out. I did want to go back to sleep, you know. In all of this commotion, our baby still sleeps without a care in the world. The next day, we were a little more clear-headed and realized something: our apartment was the third door on the right on the third floor. If the snake just wanted to come in from the cold, why not the first door on the first floor? Our suspicion was someone pulled a prank on us and then called the cops. Yeah. Funny. Real funny. There are things I'd like to say and do to that prankster, but since I'm a nice, little Christian woman I won't. I'll just say, "You reap what you sow." That makes me feel a little better.