Note: This column originally appeared eleven years ago. Our friends’ now-nineteen-year-old daughter—who checks straws as a matter-of-fact routine—did not know why or how the habit began. This is for you, Kate.
Three times in the last year we’ve come across snakes on the sidewalk… little, itty-bitty, dried up snakes. One was on the corner of our street, several feet from any potential snake spot, puzzling in its presence. It was so small and shriveled that we took it to be a worm at first, until it raised its head and waved it in that snake-like way I so love.
For the rest of that walk Megan brought up the snake roughly forty-seven times: “Can we go back and see the snake?” “Why was the snake on the sidewalk?” “Why did you say it was a worm, Daddy?” “Why is Mommy not talking, Daddy?”
I don’t care for snakes.
Actually, that is something of an understatement. I have trained myself to say that I don’t care for snakes so that I don’t transmit a fear of reptiles to children unnecessarily, but let’s face it: I hate the darn things with a white-hot hate. They creep me out.
Lucky for me, we have a new, non-snake trauma to bring up repeatedly.
Last week, on a nice hot afternoon, I decided to have a big glass of iced tea. I threw in a straw, took a big draw and suddenly realized there was something, multi-edged and sharp, in my mouth. I thought it might be a bit of plastic from the straw somehow broken loose, but it startled me enough to spit the mouthful into the sink.
There in the puddle was not a bit of stray plastic, as I had thought, but a spider, running amok in the tea, furious at me.
Did you read that?
I had a live spider in my mouth, and not only that, but it bit me on the tip of my tongue.
There was a certain amount of yelling and spitting going on for a few minutes, long enough for Megan to run downstairs and ask, “What was that?”
(Note: Mommy spitting into the sink and yelling, “Bleah! Bleah! Awk!” is very exciting. This moment will imprint itself on their young, impressionable minds very, very clearly.)
The kids were both very interested in the story, and asked lots of questions: “Did it tickle?” “Can I see?” “Where is the spider, Mommy?”
Now, I am home alone with two kids, and a spider has bitten me on the tongue. What if it is poisonous? What if my tongue swells up and I can’t call 9-1-1? I decide quickly to catch the spider, which I do with a turned-over glass in the tea puddle in the sink—oh, the spider loved that, let me tell you—and called Matt’s cell phone. He had it turned off, so I left a brief message and then called my best friend Cari and told her what had happened.
Cari was properly horrified and worried, and she called me back in a half hour or so to make sure I was okay, which, thankfully, I was.
Matt called shortly after that and was concerned, but clearly by now I was okay, so he went into “Statistic Man Mode.” Matt was sympathetic, but he also felt the need to point out that it was—and I quote‑“a garden-variety house spider.” I pointed out that he didn’t have any spider in his mouth, so the variety didn’t matter. There may have been tone, but it was garden-variety.
This is the man who told me that the snake in my closet was “statistically bound to be non-poisonous.” There is a time and place for statistics, but let me say again that once you have a snake in your closet or a spider in your mouth—which, statistically, even Matt has to agree is improbable in the extreme—statistics can take a flying leap.
On the upside, the kids aren’t asking me about the snake on the corner any more. No, now every time I take a sip from a—straw-less, by the way‑glass, I hear Thomas ask, “Where’s the spider, Mommy?”
Juliana LeRoy wears many hats, including wife, mother, paraeducator and writer. She can be spotted around Windsor gathering material, or reached at [email protected].
