My Pet Snake

I’m not big on the idea of keeping a pet. I believe that if you really want to get a dog or a cat or a monkey or something like that, then you might as well have a kid. Kids only a little more difficult to take care of and you know your dog isn’t going to be able to drive you to the hospital when you’re 63 and feel that heart attack coming. Besides, I think the clincher is that having sex is a lot more fun than a trip down to the pet store.

However, if I HAD to keep a pet, I think I’d keep a snake. I know it isn’t a very conventional choice, but I believe there are certain plus points to it.

To start off with, I’m an attention seeker. I’ll admit it -- I thrive on attention. I’d rather be walking down the street and have thirty people go, “Hey! Who’s that weirdo with the big huge snake around his neck?” than have two people smile and say, “Hey! Nice dog. What’s her name?” That’s just the way I am.

There’s also the fact that snakes don’t really require to be fed that often. An odd rodent every few weeks should do the trick. You won’t have to ruin your two-week holiday to the beach because you’re worried sick about whether your neighbor is feeding that hamster of yours or not. With a snake, you just leave him in a big box and wake him up when you get back.

Of course, there are advantages like the numerous opportunities for dirty puns that become available once you get a snake into the picture. For example, the next time I ask a girl whether she’d like to “play with my snake”, I actually wouldn’t be talking in metaphor. I guess a pet monkey would be cool for the same reason.

You can’t teach a snake to fetch the newspaper every morning, I’ll admit. But you can’t teach your dog how to fetch that pesky pen that’s fallen between your desk and the wall. With a snake, retrieving that pen is a cinch.

All this reminds me of the time when I’d caught a snake outside a friend’s house one evening some months ago. I brought it home in a cloth bag he gave me and left it next to my bed. That night, before going to sleep, I moved the bag and found it to be a little too light for my liking. So I felt it from the outside, and sure enough, it was empty! Now, 3.00 a.m. in the morning isn’t the best time to go looking for a missing snake in your apartment, and I was too tired to do the same anyway.

So I went to sleep, leaving the snake to cozy up wherever it had escaped to. The next morning I woke up and opened the bag. I found only the snake’s skin inside. (It had been shedding when I caught it.) I also found a small hole in the corner of the bag, where the stitching had opened out slightly. The snake had used the few open stitches to force its way out of the bag, increasing the hole in the process and leaving it’s skin behind. There I was with bag, skin and no snake -- looking quite foolish.

To end the story though, I finally found the snake in my parent’s bedroom, curled up behind one of the cupboards. Quite a fun time, all in all.