For my daughter's fourth birthday, we got her a baby rock python. She named him Snakey. I'd always thought a pet snake would be cool, and Snakey really was. He was about eighteen inches long and had beautiful markings.
Here they are, adorably watching TV together.
For reasons unnecessary to the story, my daughter and I were temporarily living with my parents at the time we got Snakey. My parents warily consented to having the snake at their house, and we were, of course, extremely careful when opening and closing the screen that covered Snakey's terrarium.
But then, one afternoon, Snakey was not in his cage when I came home. My heart sank when I realized that the screen wasn't properly in place. I couldn't understand how it was possible until I learned that my (ex-)sister-in-law had come over with her son earlier in the day, and they had taken Snakey out to play. She thought she had put the cover back on right, but in fact, she had not, and Snakey got out.
I was very upset, both because I had to tell my daughter her pet was missing only a few months after she got it, and also because I had to tell my parents that a python was loose somewhere in their house.
After hours of fruitless searching, I figured that Snakey had most likely slithered into a floor vent and was irretrievably lost under the house. Much less likely, yet still possible, there was a large storage closet off the living room in which Snakey could be hiding. It was getting late, though, and emptying and restocking the closet was an overly daunting project; instead, I got the bright idea of trying to lure Snakey back to his cage by baiting it with food and leaving it in the closet.
The thing about snakes is that they only eat live food, which in little Snakey's case consisted of "pinkies," baby mice that are so young, they haven't yet grown fur to cover their pink skin. They can only lie helpless in the bottom of the cage until the snake finds and eats them. They also don't live very long, so if one dies before the snake feeds, you have to go get another one.
I went to the pet store that night, came home with a pinkie, and left it in the open cage on the floor of the storage closet overnight. My hope was that Snakey would find his way into the cage, eat the pinkie, and then feel so full and comfy that he'd just curl up to sleep under his log, and that's where I'd find him in the morning.
What I found in the morning was a dead pinkie.
I tried again with a new pinkie the next night, with the same result the following morning.
On the third night, I had another, brighter idea: instead of a pinkie, I'd get a slightly more developed mouse that would live a little longer -- a baby just old enough to have a little fur and be somewhat mobile. At this stage, the pet store calls these mice "hoppers."
Hoppers, indeed.
What I found the next morning was an empty cage. No Snakey. No mouse.
So, either Snakey had crawled in, eaten the hopper, and crawled back out, or we now had a baby python and a baby mouse loose in the house. Either way, I couldn't bring myself to tell my parents.
I abandoned my plan to try to lure Snakey back to his cage. I could only hope for the best and continue periodic searches of the house, though my hopes faded as the weeks passed.
Then, one day, I came home to find my dad in the kitchen with a package of mouse traps on the counter.
"Hey, Dad, what'cha doing?" I asked innocently.
"I saw a mouse run across the floor this morning. I guess the cold weather is driving them in."
"Uh-oh.... Well, hopefully it's just the one...."
Damn.
My dad set out the traps, but as the days passed, the mouse remained at large (presumably growing larger).
Then, another day, it was just my dad and I in the house again when he saw the mouse crawl across the love seat and disappear under the cushion. Almost without thinking, I ran over, yanked off the seat cushion, and saw the tiny critter dart for a back corner. I lunged for it, but it was too fast, squeezing safely into the innards of the sofa. I should clarify: I am not a person who is afraid of mice,* but this is definitely not something I would do with a random wild rodent.
"Shoot." I stood back with a sigh of frustration. Then I noticed the incredulous expression on my dad's face.
"Uh.... I appreciate that you're trying to help, but I'm not sure you should try to catch the mouse with your bare hands like that."
"Well, Dad, actually...." I confessed what I'd done. Hearing the real story, my dad laughed himself to tears. However, we both agreed it was best not to tell mom just yet. A snake and a mouse. Yeah... no.
It wasn't much longer before the mouse met its demise, after all. It wasn't a mouse trap that got it, though. My dad was doing paperwork at the table in their home office, and when he pushed back the rolling chair to get up, somehow, he rolled right over the mouse and squished it dead into the carpet. A bizarre ending, but the whole story was pretty messed up from the beginning, anyway.
So, no more mouse, and we never did find Snakey. I'm certain he escaped through a floor vent into the crawl space via the old leaky duct work under the house, and I'm sure he didn't make it through the winter. Poor Snakey.
That's my mouse (and my snake) story.
I also have a rat story, but it isn't as good.
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* Though I have no qualms about snakes or mice, wolf spiders and waterbugs are an entirely different matter. In fact, I feel squeamish from typing those words just now. My husband once came running from the other end of the house, thinking I was being stabbed to death by a murderous intruder, but it was just me shrieking in terror over a big scary bug.
