Snakes On The Loose!

I have loved snakes for as long as I can remember. The reptile exhibits are still my favorite stop when visiting any zoo. Snakes are beautiful and fascinating animals. I would still love to have a nice collection, but time, money, space and - most of all, Diane - limit that possibility.

I kept many wild caught garter snakes when I was young. We had a wood frame covered with plywood next to the garage to hold the garbage cans at our house in St. Louis. I could pretty much guarantee finding garter snakes under there throughout the spring and summer. I would catch them and play with them and ultimately release them. Sometimes I would keep them for a while in an herpetarium I made from an old, unused fishbowl in my bedroom.

One thing that is a certainty when keeping snakes is that they will find even the tiniest flaw in your herpetarium and escape. Even a weighted lid is often not adequate for keeping captive snakes captive. A fishbowl with a screen over the top held on primarily by gravity is not really very secure; even for garter snakes.

I remember having quite a collection of garter snakes in my makeshift herpetarium one summer. I probably had five or six snakes in there. I fed them earthworms, small frogs or bugs. There was a minor problem one morning when I noticed several of my snakes had somehow disappeared since I had checked on them the night before. I futilely searched for a while before resigning myself to the fact that I would have to tell Mom we had several snakes loose in the house.

That conversation did not go the way most people would expect. Mom had no problem with me having snakes in the house. In fact, I think she rather liked them. They were just another animal to be part of the Brader Zoo - already loaded with dogs, cats, turtles, lizards, hamsters, etc. etc. etc.

Mom's immediate response to learning some of the snakes were loose was, "Don't tell Dad!"

Dad was not fond of snakes. In fact, he was terrified of them. One time we were walking along a path at The Farm in Leasburg when Dad shouted for Mom to tell him if a snake he saw coiled on a tree branch beside the path was venomous. I laughed as I watched him with the shotgun held inches away from a twelve inch Northern Rough Greensnake; a docile and completely harmless arboreal snake. Of course, to Dad, there was no such thing as a harmless snake. He was ready to pull the trigger and put nearly 200 number six pellets into the tiny snake. I thought he would have a stroke as I touched the snake and tried to coax it from the branch.

No, Dad was not fond of snakes. He didn't like that I had them in the house and he certainly was not going to be happy to hear that some of them were missing.

Mom and I searched for a while.

We were not successful.

I can still remember Mom's very specific direction that there was no reason to let Dad know anything about this little situation. I didn't say anything and I have no reason to believe she did, either. In fact, I'm certain he didn't know there were snakes loose in the house because he came into my room that night to tuck me into bed. That simply would not have happened had he known there was a chance that he would encounter a vicious garter snake. He probably would have forced the whole family to vacate the house until a professional search team could locate and eradicate these dangerous reptiles! He would never have let me bring a snake into the house again.

Mom and I ultimately recovered all of the loose snakes over the course of several days. We merely put them back into the makeshift herpetarium in my room as we re-captured them.

As far as I know, Dad died without ever knowing my snakes had escaped.

It was probably better that way.