the first thing i hear this morning

"j, there's a snake in nathan's room!" now i don't know what passes for normal, first-thing-in-the-morning conversation at your house, but around here, that's not it. it is impossible, short of going to the videotape (of which, thank God, there is none) to describe the comedy of errors that ensued. i don't know if it is because neither one of us has slept much the last two nights (nathan is sick) or that i just haven't watched the croc hunter in a while, but clearly this morning i did not have my snake catching groove on. on another day, i would have picked the thing up and carried it outside and been done with it. not today. this five inch snake shut down our house for a solid half hour while kenda and i debated our strategy for bringing it down and then executed our brilliant plan. now i have to say, in our defense, we really didn't want to kill it. after all, we were the ones that made it homeless by digging up all of the bushes in front of our house. so in a way we felt responsible for the thing. it is impossible to relay the entirety of this epic struggle between man and beast, but here are a few highlights.

equipment used in the capture

a pencil (kenda was really obsessed with "poking" the snake - i don't get it)
a towel (to keep it from escaping into nathan's closet - it could grow to 15 feet in there and we still probably wouldn't find it)
a coat hanger (see best lines below)
a 32 ounce cup (shrug)
2 different tupperware (tm) containers (now that's something they don't show you at the parties)
a copy of A Chance to Die by elizabeth elliot (i still have no idea what kenda wanted this for - maybe it was prophetic? maybe she wanted to read something to the snake before she executed her plan - see bleow)
a piece of red posterboard
starting to get a picture of the brilliance?

best lines from the battle

kenda -- "how 'bout if i hold it down with the hanger and you chop it in half" -- all i could think of after this was clark w. griswold in christmas vacation chasing the squirrel and saying "i'm going to throw the coat on it and whack it with a hammer"
j -- "the neighbors paid too much money for their homes to have to see me like this first thing in the morning" (said on going to put a shirt on after the capture, before going outside for the release)
caleb -- "cool, can we keep it for a pet?"

best onlooker

this is a tossup between
nathan laying in his bed half awake sick as a dog wondering what in the heck we are looking at
and
the school bus full of kids that drove by as we were walking out the front door, both of us holding our elaborate capturing mechanism that consisted of the larger of the tupperware containers with the bright red posterboard underneath. (i hope snakes are colorblind, if not that poor little guy is blinded)

the end

i know you are all holding your breath. we managed to get our new little friend out the front door and into the yard. i think kenda wanted to take him down the street a mile or two just to make sure he wouldn't find his way back to nathan's room, but that seemed like overkill. as he slipped into the grass and out of our lives, i found myself wondering what kind of story he would tell about the first thing that happened to him this morning.

embarrassed but victorious
j