First, I have to blow my own horn. Before I moved out to Wyoming, the very thought of snakes terrified me. My only experience with them was at the “World of Darkness” exhibit at the Bronx Zoo. Then I came west for a one-month writer’s residency program. I immediately resolved not to hike up in the 80+ acre wilds behind the grounds when I found out that snakes lived there. But I’ve toughened up in the past five years. Snakes don’t scare me anymore.

What scares me is having a casual conversation with my husband, who interrupted our musings about what to do on Friday night with: “Oh. There’s a snake in the house.”

Oh.

Aaaaaaa!!

First of all. It’s been -10 degrees or colder almost all week. Shouldn’t the little guy (or gal) be dead by now? Second: where on earth do we have a hole in our house BIG ENOUGH FOR A SNAKE TO FIT THROUGH? “It’s just a baby,” my husband reassured me. And then he followed up with: “I wonder if there’s a nest.”

I repeat: Aaaaaaa!!

He’s got a good point, actually. It’s very possible that the little venom machine just crawled out of his egg. (BTW, some snakes are born live–but they still come from eggs. The eggs hatch inside the mother’s body.) (Gag.)

Worse: now that baby slither has been captured, my husband is reluctant to release him out of doors. “He’ll die!” mourns the suddenly-animal-rights-activist. Hold on a minute: I’ve been eating strictly vegan meals since August. Can’t I trade in four-months-worth of mammals I never ate for the justified homicide of a reptile? In all seriousness: if the animal who wandered into our home was human, we could legally shoot it. But we can’t let a snake fend for itself because there’s snow on the ground?

It’s been an hour now since I spoke with my husband/zookeeper. He’s not picking up his phone. I fear that we will have a new pet by the time I get home.

Just wait ’til I get my hands on a mongoose.