the hairy tarantula!!!!!

[marie meijer]

It's raining on beautiful Mackinac Island so I am seeking refuge in a library. Our sons gave us three nights at the Grand Hotel for Christmas. Fortunately, we rode our bikes 8 miles around the perimeter yesterday. We knew our son had a Burmese Python, Sampson, at college and told him he could come home but his snake could not. Without missing a beat, he said he understood and had friends at Ann Arbor (location of that other university in MI) and we chose to interpret that Sampson was boarding with them. A couple of my husband's relatives were coming as house guests and we were thinking of inviting yet another couple. I was vacuuming my son's room, alias our second guest room, barefoot. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a red flickering tongue...attached to a very long Burmese Python. I screamed, ran out of the room and slammed the door, with the vacuum cleaner still running. My husband came running upstairs. "There's a big snake in that room" I stammered, pointing at the door. He opened the door, saw the snake and slammed the door, again! The vacuum sweeper was still running, plugged in the bathroom socket around the corner. "You never react when I scream, what happened this time?" "This scream was different", he replied. Sampson was probably 8-10' long but who wants to measure a python? Eventually our son and Sampson moved into an apartment. Sampson had knocked over a jar of peanut butter and knocked a sock into the commode and kept growing. Sampson was proving a real turn off to our son's social life so he found another home for him. It was NEVER our intent to have a python in residence.

[faygo]

  

 
 

[scorpio2]

happy dreams ya'll.

[marie meijer]

Too funny, faygo and scorpio2!    faygo's pix look like a January news story from Australia. In case you missed it: A farmer placed golf balls in a hen house to encourage the hens to lay eggs on their nests. This makes for easy egg gathering and less breakage or theft from anyone, coyote, dingo or snake. That baby python, size-wise compared to Sampson, was a few aces shy of a deck (I can hear you!) to mistake golf balls for breakfast eggs. ONE golf ball is maybe understandable, but how could it swallow FOUR. Has it no taste buds or sense of smell, feel and texture? There are still vintage, blown, white, milk glass eggs in existence from when farmers used to place them in hen's nests for inspiration. That python was fortunate to get the non-breakable golf ball variety!                Sampson was raised in a university setting. Odds were great he had never seen a vacuum sweeper before moving to our suburban home! What a perfect life, peaceful and serene, sharing a room with his owner. Who could ask for anything more? Then I entered with a vacuum sweeper, screamed, (most of you probably heard that and attributed it to an unsolved mystery) the door slammed twice and then poor Sampson coped with an unmanned vacuum sweeper. He must have been traumatized almost out of his skin!

[EDC1977]

Hey Marie, Sampsons hide might fetch you some decent dunkins! Lotsa designers like skins like that!

[marie meijer]

A python hand bag would have worked for me, but our son would have had a major problem with that! There is only one way to get python for a product and it is NOT healthy for the snake. I have seen an intact snake skin shed in a nature center. However, Sampson's skin shed was in parts after he dented my son's window screen to slither outside. Not sure how he hit the ground from the second story. Maybe fell, slithered down the brick or coin corners or could reach the heavier branches in a nearby birch tree?? None of the above seems viable. The snake skin shed is thin, brittle, almost transparent yet with that beautiful design still showing. I doubt it could be used for anything but display. Neighbors, a few doors away, found Sampson in their drive when they returned from a wedding at 1:00 AM. The neighbor and a veterinarian, conveniently across the street, realized Sampson was tame and must be someone's pet, probably belonging to the nearest college kid. They took Sampson to the animal hospital and put him in an incubator, the largest type cage they had, until they figured out the owner. The neighboress said "boys will be boys and it was kinda cute". Her husband told a very different story. He said her knees were hitting her chin as she ran into the house so fast and scared!  She was the only one who called me SNAKE LADY! It was just a coincidence they moved! We had neglected to mention to neighbors that our son had brought his snake home from college, preferring to keep a low profile.  The end.

[oej719]

Excellant story Marie.

[EDC1977]

Isn't much use for an old transparent snakeskin other than witches brew or fodder for storytelling!

[oej719]

I heard you can smoke the skin and the buzz will give one enlightenment and make one handsome and wealthy.

[EDC1977]

Whether you grind it up and put it in a bowl or roll it up in a Big Bambu paper, its still a transparent snakeskin! You of all people should know better being the Oprah of overpriced oil!