We moved into this house nearly 30 yrs ago. It was the first occupied home on the hilltop in a little country club community. My MIL, from Illinois, came to visit soon after ...a no nonsense German woman (who celebrated her 100th birthday July 26). We took her to all the local tourist spots on a nice spring day. Returning home, it was time for naps and showers before leaving again for dinner. I ran upstairs... removed my contacts and clothes, and was ready to enter the shower. That's when I saw what I thought was a leather ribbon my daughter must have left on the floor of the bathroom. As I blindly stooped to pick it up, it began to undulate and move along the wall...and I screamed bloody murder! Jumped in the shower, glass door pulled tight, and screamed for my husband. Well, he was "napping" downstairs. It was spring, AC was on, no one downstairs could hear me. Got up the courage to stick my hands out the shower door, opened the little adjacent window and yelled, but windows downstairs were closed and AC drowned me out . I finally figured out I could jump out the back of the shower, stuff a towel under the door, and scream at the top of my lungs from the upstairs landing.
Wrapped in a half-folded robe, I yelled from the top of the stairs..."snake, snake,snake,,," Did I mention the part about the no-nonsense German woman? She hit the bottom of the stairs with her little short arms on her hips and hissed..."Everyone's asleep. What the devil are you yelling for?" And putting my entire marriage in jeopardy, I screamed at her, " I have a %&^$#^^%^& snake in my bathroom! How 'bout that?" Without another word, she woke my husband...her son...who was also a Yankee... and told him I was screaming about a snake. He came a-runnin...not sure if it was because of the snake...or figuring he was going to have to run interference between mom and wife. While the rest of us stayed downstairs, he ran up...and then down ...incredibly, with a paper bag!!!! Past us and outside, he returned and announced it WAS a snake, but he had let it go in the street! What? Well..., excuse me..."I heard they run in pairs! I'm not sleeping up there until you find the other one!!!!!"
It took my daughter's 2nd grade teacher to convince me to sleep upstairs again. She claimed it was a cedar racer that got in because I left my upstairs deck door open while I watered my new petunias. She retired that year, and I still have that niggling feeling that DH paid her off to tell me that so I'd return to sleep upstairs...We don't have cedar racers...
