Uninvited guest

The barrier between the inside of our house and the outside world is tenuous at best. For the storm door to completely shut, one has to sort of lift up and pull, which is an extra step we don’t always do when our hands are full, whether carrying baskets full of laundry to and from the washing machine or transferring bags of food to and from the freezer, or even when both hands are free and we have something else on our minds. 

It is not much of a problem in the winter because the back door is shut, but that all changes in the summer. The back door mostly stays open until the last one of us goes to bed at night. Because of this, we have had a few uninvited guests “just come on in and sit a spell” with us over the years. 

One year in late summer, after we found a small frog in our bathtub several nights in a row, we let it stay there during the winter and let it go in the spring. A chipmunk lived with us for about a week before we managed to trap it and let it go outside; a possum that came in through the dog door after dog food woke us up one night wandering through the house trying to find its way out again after the back door was shut for the evening (to keep the dog in because he kept getting sprayed by a skunk, but that’s another story).

Yesterday morning as Richard was gathering up the dishes scattered around the house after our snacking the night before, he detoured over to me with one of the popcorn bowls and invited me to tell him, “Is this a good bug or a bad bug?” I really wasn’t sure what the big black thing in the bottom of the bowl was, but because it was obviously not a cockroach, I decided it was good bug and could be let go outside.

This morning I rescued a firefly in the kitchen. All part of a typical day at our house.

But we both got rather excited when Richard discovered a very different sort of uninvited guest the other afternoon.

Last Sunday’s sermon had to do with overcoming fears, and our pastor talked about her fear of snakes. Fortunately, neither of us is afraid of snakes. Nevertheless, there was certain timbre of excitement in Richard’s voice when I heard him say “Leilani, come here. There is a snake in the kitchen.”

Yes indeed. There certainly was a snake in the kitchen, and like any good blogger would do, I took one look and then raced for the camera. Mr or Ms Black Snake, probably our resident black snake from under the porch, had decided to patrol the kitchen. And of course none of the photographs I tried to take of it as it slithered across the top of our smaller counter came out very well. 

Under other circumstances, perhaps, a snake big enough to eat a rat or mouse would be welcome to patrol the inner recesses of the house. But Richard doesn’t like the idea that it might end up bed with us.

Mr or Ms Black Snake was carefully carried outside to resume his/her life.