Coming Home – To A Fear Of Snakes

I am terrified of snakes.

It’s a bit of a tricky phobia for someone who chooses to live in country Victoria with hobbies including gardening, raising chooks, hiking and camping!!!

When I was a teenager I played country tennis. Our house was quite close to the local courts and I spent most summer days meeting friends there to play for a few hours before our competition on the weekend. One Saturday after a home game I walked home alone. I got to the road in view of our house and stopped still. I couldn’t breathe. A snake, it’s red belly exposed to leave no question about its identity, was lying between me and our driveway. I froze. I stood there unable to move with my eyes focused on the sinuous terrifying shape. I stood there wishing desperately that someone would come by and save me from this horror. My mum walked most mornings with a neighbour who had been known to casually pick a snake up by the tail and whip it like a stock whip, breaking it’s back and removing the threat, loop it over a fence then casually resume their morning exercise. She was down at the courts, maybe she would be the next to walk by and be my saviour? Nearly half an hour passed and no-one appeared. I didn’t move. And then I realised. Neither did the snake. Slowly it came to me (you may have noticed this important fact quicker than I did at the time) that the snake was lying on its back. They don’t normally do this. I blinked. Looked closer.

The bloody snake was dead.

I still couldn’t go close to it. It was giving a convincing impression of death but they’re wily things, those creatures, and I wouldn’t put it past one to feign death and that squishy flatness that suggests a car tyre just to trick me into going closer!!!

I’ve never gotten over the terror of that day. Thank you for your sympathy, it is welcome. 

With such a phobia it might seem a little strange for me to move back out into rural life where the likelihood of coming face to face with the slippery critters was significantly higher than in town. I find the easiest and most effective way to deal with a phobia is to pretend that it just isn’t there. I moved us out of town seemingly without a care in the world. When my kids excitedly brought me the snakeskin they found in the paddock I closed my eyes and ordered them to remove the thing from my sight… and imagined it was all a bad dream. When a baby brown snake slithered into my daughter’s bedroom I removed myself from the room and encouraged my husband to deal with the ridiculous annoyance in the house. They wanted to show it to me when it was safely in a jar but there was no way I was going to expose myself to something like that. Reality can be a cruel mistress and I am not interested in playing that game!

The day that Ian and I were in the chook shed retrieving the body of a hen who had passed away from old age (that’s my story and I am sure I am right) we found ourselves crouched down reaching under the shed before realising we were beside a brown snake availing itself of the water handily placed there for its hydration convenience (the wordy description of a snake drinking from the water bowl helps distance myself from it…). Once again I was struck dumb and turned into a statue. This one was not only facing the right way up I could see its tongue flicking in and out of the water bowl. Proof of life. Less than a metre away from me. Our eyes met and my husband raised his brow. I’m not sure he said anything out loud but I distinctly know he said something along the lines of “what the f*** do we do now???” In the confines of the chookshed my need to run was not only out of the question it was impossible due to my marble like condition. It turns out that’s a good thing when it comes to snakes. Apparently they are more afraid of us than we are of them (yeah, good one) and this one didn’t need us to give it a fright. Ian slowly straightened up and we (look, he, I still couldn’t move) banged the ground behind the snake lightly with the rake. It lifted its head lazily (how on earth did it get to be so cool, calm and collected in that situation?) and slowly slithered off through the fencing wire and into the weeds beyond the fence. Ian and I stared at one another, retrieved the dead chook, and left the enclosure. It was quite some time before I found the courage to clean that shed out again.

In eight years of life at Ardley I calculate that that adds up to a grand total of NO snakes. That’s what I remember. Go with me here.

And then came this last year of mice. I don’t like mice either. They gross me out. One year a family made a nest in my compost and when I was turning it I drove the prongs of the fork through the nest, a most effective way of dispatching the critters but again quite off-putting for future compost husbandry. I try to keep things that mice like as far from the house as possible and hope that the chooks eat any that come near their food. They’re carnivorous, did you know that gross fact? Anyway. There were a lot of mice. We came home from a camping holiday and the dogs were beyond excited to see us. They came bounding in to the garage as we unloaded our car and then deviated towards the wall. I saw the small movement out of the corner of my eye. Isn’t it incredible how slowly it seems a moment can go? It was the time it took to take one breath and in that moment I thought:

There’s a lizard.

That’s a big lizard.

That lizard has no legs

That’s a snake.

RUN

For some unknown reason the dogs obeyed the panic in my voice and before Ian knew it I was gone and was upstairs in our bedroom with the dogs locked behind our door. I rang him.

“Where are you?”

“There’s a snake.”

“Where?!!!”

“Behind you in the garage. It’s big. I’m texting you the snake catcher’s number”.

Apparently she was going to take him and let him out somewhere. In my nightmares I imagine it was down at the bottom gate and he is still somewhere in my garden. But I choose not to believe it ever happened which means there is obviously no danger. There are still plenty of mice around but the chooks seem to be living a quiet life. Ah, the serenity.

Liz Gilbert has a powerful story about how she deals with fear.

 To be honest, I use this concept ALL the time to help myself move through things that scare me. Except for snakes. Snakes have no place in my car on the journey of life! I feel that my snake phobia is one in which fear should be taking the steering wheel and getting us the hell out of there! For everything else I am finding such power in the concept of being able to nod to fear and then buckle it into the backseat. It’s with me for the ride but it stays firmly out of the itinerary planning. Sometimes that’s really hard (when I’m parenting, when I’m publishing these blogs!) but it only needs a roadside stop for a rest from the journey and a good, long, hard debate and I can be back on the road again and free to drive.