OK, so a totally weird and scary thing happened last week in my studio. I shared a picture afterwards on my FaceBook page and have been so inundated with questions since, that I figured it best to go ahead and post the whole story to put some of the crazy rumors to bed. :)
First a little background info;
The picture on the left is of Joba, the younger of my two tuxedo cats. Even though my cats are strictly indoor cats, Joba has a fierce hunting instinct. I've had no need of a fly swatter since adopting Joba, because he will not tolerate a flying insect in the house... he catches them on the fly, usually with the 1st attempt. He also hunts down and disposes of anything that crawls into this house. Ants... beetles... millipedes... spiders...are all easy prey. If for some reason he can't reach the intruder, he stares them down until a) they come within reach, or b) I notice his hunting stance and remove/kill the offender myself. I can tell at a glance when he's on the hunt. He's motionless, eyes fixed and large, tail swishing, and sometimes ( and I love it when he does this), he makes cute little "chuckling" noises.
And now, let's go back to last Thursday night;
It was about 10:30 pm on a routine Thursday evening. My husband has to get up early on Friday morning for work, so he had just gone to bed and I was in the studio working on my shipments for the next morning. When I noticed Joba in his hunting stance over by the file cabinet I strolled over to see what he had cornered, but I couldn't see anything. A few minutes later he started making those cute little noises and his tail was whipping wildly, so I went back over to take a second look. It seemed to me that he was looking at the top of the file cabinet which is located UNDER the counter top. So I knelt down to get the same view he had... and I couldn't believe my eyes. It was night so even with the great studio lighting, it's dark under the counters, especially back in that corner, but what I saw looked an awful lot like..... a SNAKE! Holy moly!
I sprinted upstairs and woke up the hubster who was grumbling something about cleaning my glasses as he came down the stairs, but OH NO! When I looked the time... He... was... GONE!!!!! Now I KNEW it was a snake, but how could I prove it, and worse... where was he now? Lucky for us all, my husband came in and squatted on the other side of the file cabinet, just in time to see a long tail slithering INTO one of the holes in the metal sidewall. He quit grumbling! Now what do we do?
We figured he was in one of the drawers, so we (and I use this term loosely) began pain-stakingly removing everything from the drawers, piece by piece by piece. Actually, the only thing I was doing was screaming from my perch on the opposite counter top each time something in the drawer was moved. But this was to no avail because we removed EVERYTHING and STILL... no snake.
So we laid the cabinet on it's side (and I helped do this, while screaming of course) and my husband carefully pulled each drawer open. as he opened the last drawer he saw him... well, his head anyway, wedged up in the upper housing. So I got a long plastic yardstick and from as far away as possible I ran the ruler under the cabinet in his area, in hopes of driving him toward my husband, who was waiting with putter in hand to stop him. And this worked! Out he slithered... straight at my husband, but he had been so busy concentrating and I had been so busy screaming that we had both forgotten one crucial piece of the puzzle... Joba! who at that very moment came barreling out of where ever he had been (where HAD he been?) to make his kill!
Somehow my husband clamped the snake to the floor with the putter, which only infuriated him. He was whipping around, hissing and snapping, which only made him more tantalizing to Joba, and by the look of those markings, I knew this was no garter snake. As a matter of fact, in the heat of the moment we both thought he was a copperhead. So since my husband was obligated to hold the snake down, it was MY job to catch the elusive Joba and not get bit myself, which I did without screaming because by now I was too scared to even scream.
With Joba safely sequestered, NOW WHAT? The hubster sure couldn't hold that snake down all night. So we considered the possibilities and decided on an empty kitty litter box (the plastic kind with the snap-on lid). Don't ask me how Bubba got that snake inside that box, because i do not know. My eyes were closed, but it sure was sweet relief once that lid clicked shut.
My husband put the box in the garage, went upstairs and was in bed and asleep within 10 minutes! MEN! How do they DO that? I think I may have finally drifted off to sleep somewhere around 3am.
Some further some closing info.
1) We've since found out this was no copperhead. Our best guess is that this was a juvenile rat snake. Mean tempered? yes. Scary? yes. Poisonous? No.
2) My husband is adamant about not killing a snake. To me, all bets are off when a snake is foolish enough to invade my territory, but the hubster will not. So, he took him to work and let him go in the woods out back.
3) How long had he been in the studio before Joba found him? I shudder to think about that. Remember, we had just come back from a week in Missouri for the Quilt Market and since snakes can live a LONG time without eating and based on how ill-tempered he was, he might have been there awhile.
4) What if he had been in a drawer when I opened it? I can't think about that!
5) And HOW in the world did he get in? That's the 6 million dollar question!
:)
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| The King of the Studio |
The picture on the left is of Joba, the younger of my two tuxedo cats. Even though my cats are strictly indoor cats, Joba has a fierce hunting instinct. I've had no need of a fly swatter since adopting Joba, because he will not tolerate a flying insect in the house... he catches them on the fly, usually with the 1st attempt. He also hunts down and disposes of anything that crawls into this house. Ants... beetles... millipedes... spiders...are all easy prey. If for some reason he can't reach the intruder, he stares them down until a) they come within reach, or b) I notice his hunting stance and remove/kill the offender myself. I can tell at a glance when he's on the hunt. He's motionless, eyes fixed and large, tail swishing, and sometimes ( and I love it when he does this), he makes cute little "chuckling" noises.
And now, let's go back to last Thursday night;
It was about 10:30 pm on a routine Thursday evening. My husband has to get up early on Friday morning for work, so he had just gone to bed and I was in the studio working on my shipments for the next morning. When I noticed Joba in his hunting stance over by the file cabinet I strolled over to see what he had cornered, but I couldn't see anything. A few minutes later he started making those cute little noises and his tail was whipping wildly, so I went back over to take a second look. It seemed to me that he was looking at the top of the file cabinet which is located UNDER the counter top. So I knelt down to get the same view he had... and I couldn't believe my eyes. It was night so even with the great studio lighting, it's dark under the counters, especially back in that corner, but what I saw looked an awful lot like..... a SNAKE! Holy moly!
![]() |
| Got im! |
We figured he was in one of the drawers, so we (and I use this term loosely) began pain-stakingly removing everything from the drawers, piece by piece by piece. Actually, the only thing I was doing was screaming from my perch on the opposite counter top each time something in the drawer was moved. But this was to no avail because we removed EVERYTHING and STILL... no snake.
So we laid the cabinet on it's side (and I helped do this, while screaming of course) and my husband carefully pulled each drawer open. as he opened the last drawer he saw him... well, his head anyway, wedged up in the upper housing. So I got a long plastic yardstick and from as far away as possible I ran the ruler under the cabinet in his area, in hopes of driving him toward my husband, who was waiting with putter in hand to stop him. And this worked! Out he slithered... straight at my husband, but he had been so busy concentrating and I had been so busy screaming that we had both forgotten one crucial piece of the puzzle... Joba! who at that very moment came barreling out of where ever he had been (where HAD he been?) to make his kill!
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| Gosh, what a scary little guy he was! |
With Joba safely sequestered, NOW WHAT? The hubster sure couldn't hold that snake down all night. So we considered the possibilities and decided on an empty kitty litter box (the plastic kind with the snap-on lid). Don't ask me how Bubba got that snake inside that box, because i do not know. My eyes were closed, but it sure was sweet relief once that lid clicked shut.
My husband put the box in the garage, went upstairs and was in bed and asleep within 10 minutes! MEN! How do they DO that? I think I may have finally drifted off to sleep somewhere around 3am.
Some further some closing info.
1) We've since found out this was no copperhead. Our best guess is that this was a juvenile rat snake. Mean tempered? yes. Scary? yes. Poisonous? No.
2) My husband is adamant about not killing a snake. To me, all bets are off when a snake is foolish enough to invade my territory, but the hubster will not. So, he took him to work and let him go in the woods out back.
3) How long had he been in the studio before Joba found him? I shudder to think about that. Remember, we had just come back from a week in Missouri for the Quilt Market and since snakes can live a LONG time without eating and based on how ill-tempered he was, he might have been there awhile.
4) What if he had been in a drawer when I opened it? I can't think about that!
5) And HOW in the world did he get in? That's the 6 million dollar question!
So... what questions, thoughts, ideas or comments might you have?
We welcome any and all advice you might have, so feel free to share in the space provided below!:)












































