A Pet Snake Story

By Linda Madrid

The most interesting pet I have ever had was a black snake.   Johnny’s gift to me after we were first engaged.  I had just finished a summer semester of college taking a course in Mycology. There were only six people in the class. On Tuesdays and Thursdays the professor found out no one had class before his twelve o’clock lab.  The Professor had us all meet at 8 AM for his two-hour labs, which he changed to six-hour labs. We would head out to the State Park near the Mississippi river and collect all sorts of things for the Biology department such as Slime Molds, snakes (a six-foot water moccasin, which I got to ride next to in the car on the way home), many types of fungi and many types of plants.  

I was very proud of the terrarium that I had managed to put together. Several nice species of ferns, reindeer moss, lichens, and some interesting shaped rotten tree limbs with some colorful slime mold fruiting bodies (slime molds are quite interesting once you get to know them).   Johnny noticed the nice terrarium in my apartment and commented that all it needed to be complete was a snake (now why didn’t I think of that). 

Johnny went out and caught a nice small black snake. It was six inches long and about as round as my little finger.  Johnny made a top for my terrarium, which was, supposed to keep the little feller in (which it did not).  The little guy got out quite a lot and when I wasn’t there to put him back in his terrarium, my roommate (who said she hated snakes) would escort the little guy back to his domicile. She confessed to me that she did not know which was worse, seeing the little creature slither a cross the floor or picking him up and putting him back in his, not so secure, cage. (She was a great roommate)

Johnny thought the little guy needed a companion. So he caught a small green snake to keep the black snake company (now we had two creatures slithering across the floor).  Now black snakes eat other snakes and I interrupted the black snake trying to make a meal out of the green snake.  The green snake did not live long after that and had a burial at sea. (The ocean is just a flush away, isn’t it?)

As hard as it is to believe this is a true story, the only thing I left out is the name my roommate and I would call the little guy when he would bite, which was when ever we attempted to put him back in the terrarium.