Where the Wild Things Are, Part III

There are many things you don't have to deal with as an apartment-dweller: $250 water bills, for instance, or gophers, or...snakes in your garage. Well, not snakes, plural, but a singular snake, who interrupted my Organization Extravaganza (nesting already?!) quite rudely and without invitation this weekend.

Having already done the dishes, overhauled two kitchen cabinets and two drawers, organized the laundry room, removed all non-baby-related items from the Chaos Room (soon to be Cubby Two's room), and cleaned out my closet, I decided that Sunday would not be complete until I had condensed all the boxes of teacher stuff in our garage, labeled them neatly, and stacked them in a Tetris-like manner against one wall. Do NOT ask me how much progress I made on, say, the paper I have due on Saturday for my master's class. I have selective motivation.

Midway through the garage project, I took Cubby inside for a diaper change, and brought her back out just in time to see a black, slithery intruder enter the garage and go back behind some boxes. Summoning all the vocabulary at my disposal from 4 years as an English major and 6 years as an educator, I declared, "EeeeeeeeweeeeeweeeeWEEEEEKK!!!" and hauled Cubby into the house, where I made various phone calls to determine whether snake-in-garage counted as...

a) a "You're a homeowner now--deal with it" situation or

b) a "Someone will come and take care of this for you if you never again complain about paying taxes" situation.

Long story short, animal control sent out a 22-year-old chick armed with--I am not making this up--a long stick and a giant Folger's coffee can, which clearly made the point that I am a complete weenie. She searched the whole garage and found no trace of the snake, who must have snacked on a few crickets and made his exit already, and I finished my rearranging with no further incident.

Gophers and water bill, consider yourselves warned. You're next. If only the stick-and-Folger's-can method were a more universal (and less gross) problem-solver...