A couple of evenings ago a few friends and I were swapping stories. You know how it goes, someone recounts a story, someone else chimes in with one of their own, on and on. A friend recalled his family's anxiety over a mouse that appeared in their bathtub. Creature encounters? Bathtub? I've got one for you.
It was the mid 1990's. Early one Tuesday morning, Shari and our two oldest girls were seated at the dining room table eating breakfast. I entered the bathroom (in a hallway adjacent to the dining area, so literally just a few feet from where they sat) to take a shower.
The ritual of preparing for a shower becomes automatic--you don't think about the different steps, you just do them. I reached in and turned on the water without looking. I got undressed, and I stepped into the tub. In the tub, I continued on auto-pilot--I slid the shower curtain closed. At once, I was aware that something dropped at my feet.
Have you ever had an experience where you seemingly process many moments worth of thoughts in a single instant? Aware that something dropped at my feet, a list of possibile explanations flashed through my mind--the wife had left something on the side of the tub, a towel had been hung on the bar, a toy from one of the girls' baths, and so on.
I looked down--I think I even began to bend down to remove the object--when I realized it was a snake coiled up on the bathtub drain.
With Ninja-like quickness, I tell you, I sprang out of the tub... taking the shower curtain, rod and rings clean off the wall as I went. I spun to eye the intruder--he was now attempting to slither out of the bathtub, so I reached for a weapon--a large back-scrubbing luffa and attempted to... reason with the snake.
No doubt hearing the commotion, my wife Shari knocked on the bathroom door, "Honey, you okay?"
I don't recall how I answered her. How would you have answered her?
Now here's the thing: I wish I could tell you that my first thought was a spiritual one. I wish I could tell you I rebuked that snake in the name of Jesus. I wish I could tell you that I stopped and offered an effectual prayer. But before I gave the situation any thought at all I had commenced to swinging my luffa at the snake, the tub, the wall, the floor--I yelled and jumped and leaped. For his part the snake responded by coiling up on the drain and rattling his tail. Yes, I said rattling his tail.
THINK! Then came a moment of composure. 'Okay, there's a rattlesnake in my bathtub. I'm holding a luffa. And I'm naked.'
I confess, my first reasonable thought was that, were I to get bit, I didn't want the paramedics to come and find me naked. Underwear! Without taking my eyes of the snake or setting down the luffa, I managed to put on my underwear. Strange, I actually felt much better at that moment.
I spied a wastebasket under the sink. Perfect. I have a luffa. I have a trash can. How hard can this be?
Next I called to Shari. Something like, "Uh, Sweetheart..." How do you tell your wife that you're about to pick up a rattlesnake and carry him through the house?
In what I would describe as less than "kindness to reptiles" fashion, I swooped the snake into the can with the luffa, screamed for Shari to open the door and began across the house at breakneck speed. My two young daughters thought this was funny--look at Daddy! "Open the front door!" I demanded. Sensing this wasn't a game, Shari quickly opened the door.
As I hit the doorway, I had another of those moments where thoughts race: There was my neighbor, Mrs. Hudson, across the street walking her dog. There was the city sanitation truck--garbage men collecting my trash at the curb. There were my daughters staring at me and wondering what kind of game Dad was playing. And there I was, now standing in the doorway--in my underwear--wastebasket in one hand and luffa in the other.
"Close the door!" I yelled. Shari did. But now what? Now I am in the middle of the house, pressing a venomous snake into a trash can with a back-scrubbing sponge, while my daughters sit nearby eating Cheerios. This wouldn't do.
"Open the door!" All eyes upon me, I ran straight out into the yard, turned right and threw wastebasket, the luffa and serpent in the general direction of a wooded corner of our lot. Just as quickly, I turned and sprinted back into the house. "Close the door!"
It's been several years. I've told the story many times. My wife and kids enjoy telling the story from their point of view.
I'll have you know, the experience forever changed me. I never reach into a shower without looking. Most of the time, I shake the shower curtain before I step into a tub. When I enter an unfamiliar bathroom, I take a mental inventory of the items I would reach for first should I have to duel with a serpent.
AND I always know exactly where to find my underwear!
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