My buddy John's son Andrew has a rubber snake that he has been known to leave lying in places where it can be found by impressionable who suffer from Ophidiophobia. So I'm tired and heading for bed and I look over at the bedstand and think "Andrew, you little %#&*^&, I wish you wouldn't leave that think lying around, some people don't find it that funny...". Then I think "hmmm, Andrew hasn't been here for a couple of weeks and I'm sure I would have noticed it before...". Then I realize it's a real snake.
It seems to have taken up residence on my bedstand. Now I have no particular problem with snakes, even highly venomous ones (I grew up with them in the back yard on the banks of the Yarra river in Melbourne), but having one in your bedroom is going a bit far.
So I enlist my next door neighbors help and we manage to get the thing out of the house. Seems like he has had similar problems in the past, we live right on the beach and there is a lot of undeveloped bushland next to us. We're hitting the hot, rainy season, and the things are getting active. Just why it decided to visit is unclear, probably looking for a nice dry spot.
I usually leave all the doors open at night when I'm home, I figure I'll have to be a bit careful now. And I often get up in the middle of the night and stagger round the house in the dark... from now on I'll be turning the lights on before I do anything.
And the thought just occurred to me that my bedside lamp is usually sitting just where the snake was - I took it away to use somewhere else a few days ago. The switch is on the power lead - I have this vivid mental image of groping around the dark for the switch and grabbing that instead!
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