by Carole Ligi

Created on: July 04, 2010

Many people can relate to this story and that the only good snake is a dead snake. 

The man bought the house back in 1989.  It had sat empty for six months when he purchased it to be closer to his job.  The 30-year-old Split Level house was in good shape as it only needed updating.  New appliances, painting and some of the plumbing needed to be replaced.

 And he was a talented handy man around the place enjoying the labors of doing everything by him self.  He lived there alone with his dog until his fiancé could join him a few months later.  So he thought.

 There he was down in the basement on a step ladder replacing the old worn out copper plumbing with updated PCP.  The dog, a Cocker Spaniel, came in every once in a while to check on him and then went back to a nice sunny spot for a snooze. 

However, the last time the dog came into the basement he started barking and trying to climb up the ladder.  Basically going berserk.  The man looked down at the dog and asked, “What on earth is your problem?”  He then tried to ignore the dog, but the dog’s barking and panicking became more persistent.

 The man felt a tap on his shoulder.  He ignored it at first between dealing with a dog that was acting crazy and trying to get the plumbing project competed.  Someone or something tapped him on the shoulder again. 

He turned his head and was looking face to face in the eyes of a six-foot-long black snake.  He let out a blood curdling scream, tools went flying and he was falling all over the dog in his panic to get off the ladder.  

The snake decided that it had enough of this crazy man and his crazy dog and started to slitter away along the pipes in the ceiling.  The man yelled, “Oh no you don’t!”  And grabbed the nearest thing he could find and that was a metal rake standing against the wall.   

It became an epic struggle of the man trying to trap the snake and the snake realizing that its life was in peril and trying to get away.  The man was chasing the snake along the plumbing desperately trying to trap it.  The snake dodged the man’s attempts time and time again. 

 Then the snake made a fatal error in judgment.  It tried to slitter down the wall.  The man, acting crazed, trapped the snake with the rake and yelled, “Aha!” in victory.  The snake put up a battle, but in the end the man won and the snake lost its life for having come inside the house.

 When the man’s fiancé came over the next day after work to help out with the house she was greeted by a dead six-foot black snake neatly coiled beside the driveway.  She shook her head and stated this has got to be good.  After hearing the story she asked why the man left the dead snake in the place that he did.  He stated, “To let this be a warning to all other snakes.”  “The inside of the house is mine.”  “The outside is yours.”  

After the epic battle with the snake the man had to start over from scratch to redo the plumbing.  In his enthusiasm he knocked down half of the pipes.  But the real hero of the day was the cocker spaniel that saved his owner’s life by alerting him to the impending predator.  The snake.    

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