SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSeriously?

When Sloan entered fourth grade, he was lucky enough to have a teacher that loved science, biology and animals.  She had various animals in her room in aquariums -- fish, lizards, snakes, frogs, etc.-- magnets for little boys.  Sloan was mesmerized by the snakes and begged me to have one of his own.  Of course, I balked.  No way would I have a snake in this house.  We had enough animals and I am not too keen on snakes.  For weeks, he asked, all the while telling me how it would be "educational" for him, which he knew to be a catch phrase for me.  He promised he would pay for the snake all by himself and would earn enough money to pay to feed the snake.  Nope, I was not going to give in. 


Then JA2 enters the picture and sides with the boy because he had a snake himself at one point and it was very "cool." 


So between the two of them, they located three coeds in Clemson on Craigslist who realized after they purchased two baby corn snakes, they would not be able to keep them in their apartment unless they paid a pet deposit.  They had to unload the snakes, along with the aquarium, the light, and everything required to keep a snake.  I'm still not sure how the three girls ended up with two snakes but they were willing to part with it all for $60 which was the equivalent of Sloan's savings in his piggy bank.


After witnessing the coeds handle the snakes, Sloan handle the snakes, and even Emma handle the snakes, I gave in.   Heck it was a good deal and I am all about good deals.  Plus Sloan PROMISED me he would take care of them all by himself and would earn money to pay for their food.  (Somebody please slap me the next time I believe that line!)  I even touched one of them and they were not nearly as slimy as I thought they would be.


I will have to admit that I enjoyed watching the snakes once we got them home.  They were only maybe 10" long, so they weren't that intimidating.  Watching them eat thawed baby mice was quite interesting too; as long as we weren't feeding them live mice, I was fine with that.  So Sloan was true to his word -- for maybe three weeks.  Then he got bored with them.  I had to remind him to feed them, remind him to handle them, remind him to change their light from daytime to nighttime.  Ugggg.  Lesson learned, again, by a mama after the fact.


So at some point, I had to go to Atlanta for a few days for work.  The ONLY responsibility I left for my son and his dad, my ex, was to come by the house once a week and take care of the animals, primarily the snakes.  On my second day out of town, I got a voicemail from my ex that went something like this, "Can you call me as soon as you get this message?  We have a minor emergency we need to discuss."  I heard that message and really thought long and hard about whether to even call back.  The last time he left a message like this was when "my son" had peed in his bathroom when he was a toddler and started a small fire.  These are not calls you look forward to returning.


After promising myself that I would have a glass of wine at the end of the conversation to at least provide an incentive, I made the call back to the ex.  He said that he and Sloan came by the house to check on the snakes.  They had come by previously (which I thought was the day before but later learned it was TWO days before) and fed the snakes.  For those of you who have never owned multiple reptiles, one thing to remember here is that they cannot be fed together.  They have separate feeding environments, which are basically plastic containers that stack on top of each other.      Apparently two days is too long, at least in my house, to keep snakes in their feeding containers, as they were knocked over and the tops opened, reportedly by a curious kitty cat.  My ex assured me that they looked for the snakes and could not find them, so they were both absolutely positive that the cat ate them both.  All I could think of was that neither this man nor his son can spot mayonnaise in front of them in the refrigerator -- how could they have really looked for these snakes?  Plus this was my ex who could probably care less if snakes are crawling around in my house!


I went through the next day of work, with thoughts of snakes running through my mind all day, along with the dread of walking into the house after driving 2 hours back from Atlanta.  Once I got home, though, I walked in the house, parked my luggage in the living room, yelled out to the children that I was home, and immediately walked to Sloan's room and started looking under the bed, in the closet, in his bookshelves, in his clothes, everywhere, to see if I could find snakes.  Meanwhile, Sloan yells out, while watching some TV program that was apparently very spellbinding, "Mom, chill out!  The cat ate the snakes."  That may have made him feel better, but it most definitely did not make me feel better.  My cat likes to play with moles in the front yard but does not EAT the moles.  So I figured the snakes were either limping along (do snakes limp?) after being a play toy for my cat, had escaped my cat, or were behind some major appliance mummifying.  Disregarding Sloan's reassurances, I tore the house apart, on a mission to find the snakes or some remnants of snakes.  I found NOTHING. 


For the next month, I could not get in bed without checking under the covers.  I would not get up at night in the dark without turning on the light first.  (How terrifying would it be to step on a snake in your bare feet??).  I would not stick my hand in a drawer or a closet without looking around first.  I had my own safety checklist to avoid snakes.  And it wasn't the thought of the snakes themselves that scared me as much as it was the thought of the snakes surprising me and giving me a heart attack! 


After that month and no snakes, I focused on smelling.  Surely they would have died and would be decomposing somewhere.  But besides the smells of a 9 year old boy, there were no other bad smells in the house.  Again, NOTHING.


For those of you who are sssssssssssssseriously scared of snakes, there is not a good ending to this story.  I never found the snakes, dead or alive.  To this day, I don't know what happened to them.  What I do know is this:  I will never own snakes again, nor any other reptile.  Ever.  I promise.  Not even if Sloan begs and agrees to pay with his own money.  Never, ever........