Ever had a critter in your house? Not talking about bugs! You’ve read of my raccoon party….

Guess the first critter in the house was when I was a child. My daddy brought a new born calf home to the living room to warm up. The calf’s mother had birthed in the creek on an icy night and daddy was afraid it would die. He covered the living room floor with a large piece of thick plastic and hemmed the calf in with the sofa and dining room chairs, and turned the gas logs on.. “Don’t worry,” he kept telling my mother. “The calf is too weak to walk around and make a mess. It’ll sleep all night,” he said.

Well, not only did it not sleep, it walked in my bedroom and nosed my hand in the middle of the night. I just about had a come apart till I realized it was the calf. No, it didn’t sleep all night! And I didn’t either!

You know those little green lizards. Proper name is Green Anole. I hate those tiny, green dinosaurs. Well, I was a new bride in my castle in the woods and kept feeling like something was looking at me and watching me. I looked around and the lizard was sitting on my shoulder eyeballing me. I flicked it off and it landed in the dishwasher! When Chief came home he had to wrangle it out of the dishwasher! He thought I was crazy.

Those lizards have tortured me since then. The door in our library in Alexander City was always drafty in the winter time so I’d just put a strip of duct tape down the door facing where the two doors met. It was a quick fix. I’d been doing that for years. Well, I was rolling that tape down the door and here comes a little dinosaur. I just kept on rolling the tape and felt so bad. Stew was watching me and said I’d murdered the poor thing. It was too late to turn back.

We inherited my son Thomas’ house cat when he got married. She was old and grouchy and set in her ways. One day I noticed her growling and pawing at the heat vent in the breakfast room. I’m thinking it’s a mouse but I see a large snake coiled trying to turn around in the vent. I immediately think of Uncle Charles assuring RaRa that snakes can’t enter the house through the heat and air conditioning vents. He was a electrical and plumbing contractor so he should know, right? He lied! If there is a crack in the ductwork, they will find it.

I ran and got Stew’s shot gun knowing I couldn’t shoot down the vent but I felt better armed. The snake turned around and went down the vent. I literally ran all over the kitchen gathering all my and Mrs. Saunders cast iron cookware and covered every heat vent in the house with a cast iron pot and a few encyclopedias. Chief had 15 sets of encyclopedias so I didn’t think he’d miss any.

The next snake encounter was many years later. I was in the library bathroom and noticed something in the corner by the door. Two small snakes…I’m afraid to leave them to get a murder weapon because I know the suckers will sneak over to my bed and nap under my pillow! I have to watch where they go.

So I start hollering for Chief and yelling, “Snake, snake.” He strolls in the library and says, “Steak…thought we were having meatloaf for supper.” Well, both snakes squeezed under the baseboard while we were discussing supper. As I watch the last tail slide away, I hear Stew calling me in the kitchen, yelling snake, snake! But he saved his mother and killed it with the butt of a toy bb gun. Honestly it was years before I could put a barefoot on the floor beside the bed. And I always looked under our pillows on the bed just in case.

One morning I had gotten up early and was walking down the hall. I glanced down at the baseboard and thought Thomas must have dropped a bungee cord. The snake was stretched out straight as a stick. Soon as I thought bungee cord, the snake started fleeing down the hall. I meant this time it wasn’t getting away. Stew ran for the hoe on the front porch while I wrangled a large dresser from one side of the hall to the other. The snake was no where to be seen. I had a tall stack of children’s books on the floor by the dresser and found the snake wrapped around the binding on one of the books. I killed it and we didn’t have any more snake visitors.

I had a beautiful kitchen garden the summer of Rosie’s death. I planted flowers and herbs and vegetables. Made a trellis of string in a spiderweb design for the beans and cucumbers to climb. Used bricks to make a pathway through the herbs. Poured all my grief into that little kitchen garden. One morning I was watering the garden before I went to work, I noticed a large king snake lounging under a squash plant. He visited the garden all summer long. I didn’t bother him and he didn’t bother me.

But I thought…you come in my house and that’s the last place you’ll ever crawl!