The summer after my fourth grade year, my parents moved us. We had been living in a house in town, and now we were going to be living in the country again. That move was kinda weird because mom and dad with the help of some friends, moved everything our last day of school. When we came home on the bus, the house was empty and no one was there. My parents didn’t move a lot, but they had a method unlike anyone I had seen before or since. They went together to the new house and cleaned. Then, they packed one room, moved all of it’s contents, unpacked it at the new house, and kept doing the same thing until we were completely moved in. They only needed enough boxes to move one room at a time. So, when they came and got us, the only thing left to do at the new house was hang the pictures on the walls.
We had three horses. They had been moved and settled into the barn on the new place before we ever saw it for ourselves. At the old place, not only was it in the city limits and surrounded by houses, it had a very small pasture and no barn. This move was good for all of us because of the expansion in outdoor living space we were gaining.
One more interesting fact: This was the second time we had lived in this house in the country. It was owned by a doctor and his wife, and they rented it to us. The first time, I was 5. We lived there for about a year, then my grandpa got sick with emphysema, and we moved to his farm to take care of it until it could be sold. He died a couple of years later. Mom and dad were attached to the farmhouse. A justice of the peace had owned it before and they were married in the living room. If they could have bought it, they would have.
The very first day, I went to the barn with dad to check on the horses. That was the first time I saw the snake. Dad pointed it out to me. He gave this little speech about how black snakes are good snakes. They eat the mice and rats that carry diseases so if you had a black snake living in your barn, you were lucky. Whatever.
I have three sisters, all older than me. Yes, I am the baby of the family. My dad’s nickname for me all my life was baby. He called me that right up until he died and I was grown with a family of my own at the time.
The younger three of us were outdoorsy types. Our eldest sister liked it outside too, but she had allergies. The barn was a playground to us. In the winter when it was too cold to be outside, it provided shelter and we used it for everything from playing house with our dolls, to jumping rope in an empty stall. As we got older, it was used, in my case anyway, as a place to smoke when I was too young to be smoking. We were in it every day in the winter to feed animals, and a lot in the summer when we were riding our horses. It was actually just about as busy a place as the house.
Through all of those years, every time I walked in there, I looked for the snake. It was usually on the top of a wall, watching us. I remember times when we were playing down in a stall, and it would be somewhere watching us, and then we would move somewhere else and it would follow. A couple of times it scared the crap out of me. Our oat barrel was metal and had a flat metal lid. Sometimes, someone, of course not me, would be careless putting it back on and it wouldn’t be centered right. It’s own weight and the groove all the way around the outside was the only thing that kept it on the barrel. I always put my hand on the lid, and lifted and shoved at the same time to knock it off and into the floor. See, if the lid isn’t on right, mice can get in the barrel. The outside must have been rough enough for them to climb, but the inside was worn too smooth because they would be trapped in the barrel. The black snake was not a tiny snake. It was probably 5 feet long when we moved in so I’m guessing the mice could squeeze through a smaller hole than it could.
So, picture this. I shove the lid off, and at the same second the snake drops from somewhere above me into the barrel. I never stayed to watch it eat the mice, it was always at this point that I ran screaming outside. I’m not afraid of snakes. But, you try being in that situation as a kid.
The years passed. Dad sold two of our horses and that left us with one old mare that was too old to be ridden. My sister’s and I left home starting our lives with our own families. The only time the barn was used was when dad fed the mare some grain and hay in the winter. Summers she was turned out on the pasture but one of the stall doors was left open so she had shelter from the rain.
One summer day, my eldest sister came to visit mom for the day. The house and garage were connected by a porch, and there was a door going out the opposite way from the driveway. This door led to a fenced in side yard. As the grandchildren were born, my parents bought swing set and some outdoor toys for them, and they were in this fenced yard. Mom and my sister were baking, and they propped open the outside door for her three year old son so he could play outside and come in and out as he wanted to. The kitchen door leading onto the porch was also open.
Later that evening, dad was sleeping (he worked nights), and mom was curled up on the couch watching television. She felt something cold touch her bare leg. At first she didn’t think anything of it, she just assumed it was my cat that I had left there when I moved away. Then she remembered that she had let him outside earlier. She glanced at the other end of the couch and found out she had company. Our black rat snake who was now almost 7 feet long was curled up, watching television with her. Mom freaked. She didn’t remember how she got from the couch to dad, but she did very quickly. She woke him up and he went to the living room with her.
The snake had gone over the arm of the couch and was coiled up under a bookshelf that was in the corner. It was one of those that had legs. The only thing between it and the front door was our television, and it was one of those old types that had legs too. Dad opened the front door, and then shooed it from under the bookshelf and it went under the tv. He couldn’t get it to go on out the door, so he reached under the television and grabbed it. When he did, it bit him, but he got it outside.
My family talked about it later and we have a theory. That snake had spent all of those years watching and listening to us playing and working in the barn. Then, it was all alone. When my nephew was playing outside that day, he was making the typical sounds for a little boy when he’s playing. It must have attracted the attention of the snake. We think it was lonely but there was no way any of us wanted a 7 foot black rat snake as a house pet.
