Early one Saturday morning my husband rushed through the front door, into the kitchen and said he needed me to help him with a snake.
Wait a minute. I set my cup on the counter.
"You need me to do what?"
He made haste to the garage as I trailed behind him. On the way, he explained the situation we had on our hands.
A few days earlier, he had covered the hosta garden with netting to keep the deer from devouring the foliage. Unfortunately, a black snake had become entangled in the yardage. Now we had to free it from its straightjacket of mesh.
My husband grabbed two pair of heavy work gloves and one pair of scissors. Then we headed down the driveway toward the creek. As we hurried along, he laid out a potential strategy.
"I'll hold the snake and you cut the netting."
Wait another minute. I expressed a distaste for those instructions and for the alternate one as well. I could not imagine me voluntarily coming into contact with a snake, wrapped or unwrapped. Years before, at a reptile exhibit in an amusement park when the Jack Hanna-type host asked for a volunteer from the audience, I froze, lest any movement be misconstrued as my willingness to participate, like scratching an ear is mistaken for a bid at an auction.
I soon witnessed the snake lying on the ground in its cocoon, motionless and helpless, and I realized that more than two hands would be required to release it from its constrictive prison. After a very few minutes of deliberation, both my husband and I put on the heavy-duty gloves. Mine looked as big as baseball mitts.
We decided to start at the tail. Inhaling a deep breath, I took hold of the snake with both hands. My husband held with his left and began cutting with his right. The entire length of snake was wound in layers of netting almost as tightly as a golf ball and the work was painstaking. He cut slowly and diligently. Snip ... Snip. The netting came loose a half inch at a time.
As its tail began wiggling free, it coiled around my wrist, and as additional inches loosened up, there was simply too much snake for me to control and hold steady at the same time, so it coiled up to my elbow and crept even further until it spiraled around my bare arm all the way to my shoulder. Managing to suppress any visible signs of panic, I did not refrain from voicing to my husband flat out but kindly, "We need to be getting this snake off my arm." He kept on snipping.
Finally he made the last cut and with our gloved hands, we held on to the relatively calm snake that had found comfort in hugging my arm. To our advantage, the varmint was probably tuckered out from a fitful night of trying to untangle itself. We unwound it from me and stretched out the length as best we could. Then we laid it in the grass, carefully let go and stepped back.
Liberated at last, the snake moseyed along the creek bank and into the woods, without waving or motioning the slightest goodbye, but I felt assured that all three of us enjoyed the same elation and sense of satisfaction. We watched until it slithered out of sight.
Because of that incident, my husband began spraying a stinky concoction to curb wildlife cravings for guacamole hostas. That memorable day marks the first and last time our netting was used, and the only time I ever wound up with a snake.