Adventures with snakes

About two weeks ago I was in the kitchen/laundry area throwing dirty clothes in the hamper when I felt something skim my foot, I thought it was a gecko (very common in our house) when I looked down I saw a long slithery object, I screamed bloody murder and ran to the other side of the house. Greg came to the rescue and spent the next 20 minutes looking for the snake and found nothing. I began to doubt myself, after all it was dark. Greg sincerely believed that I saw/felt a snake but for the sake of my sanity I really wished that he would have just called me a lunatic and let me think that it was all in my imagination.

Time passed by with out much more thought to my snake encounter. On Monday night about 10 (which is very late for us) I was reading in bed when Greg whispers to me Rachel...Rachel... still whispering There's a snake in the bathroom...Rachel In disbelief I get up out of bed and sure enough there was a snake coiled up right on the bathroom floor by our vanity. My eyes got really big and Greg looks at me and says don't panic get me the flash light and broom. Greg than tries to stun the snake with the light and somehow catch it with the broom to take outside. (as was his previous method that last time we had a snake in the house) The snake was quicker than Greg and slithered behind the vanity and into the wall. I was scared silly and went in the other room to wallow in my fear. Greg continued to stake out the bathroom and would yell at me every time he would see the snake pop it's head out from the vanity/wall gap, asking me to help him catch the snake, I was pretty useless in the effort.

A few minutes pass by and I decided to call the Navy housing office. They sent someone over within 45 minutes. The housing tech and Greg spent the next 15 minutes trying to coax the snake out from behind the vanity. After awhile The housing tech guy told us there was nothing he could do about the snake because it was now somewhere in our walls and we should call back tomorrow. Greg and I than proceeded to duct tape the entire bathroom vanity, to keep the snake from returning or crawling out.

The next day USDA was at our house with a big truck and dogs to sniff out snakes-however I didn't know they were coming and no one was home, the housing office had called them. When I came home from work I called the housing office to talk about our snake situation (in my mind our walls were probably filled with snakes and we should be moving to another house) The USDA got involved because snakes are a danger to the local environment here on Guam and it was very important to catch the snake and make sure there aren't others. The USDA doesn't have a 24 hour service on our side of the island (the other side does) so they wouldn't come out in the afternoon only the morning. I asked for the day off from work and I made an appointment with USDA who came back to my house with their working dog. The USDA Man came to the bathroom where the snake was sighted, he saw the duct tape and pulled a piece off to find the snake's head stuck to the tape, it was super gross to watch him pull out the snake (which was now dead) The USDA guy said the duct tape was a good solution (Greg will be happy when I tell him that)The working dog than came into the house and sniffed the whole area, it was a really cute dog that looked like wishbone the dog from the PBS kids show (I forget the actual breed name)The dog didn't find anything, which in my mind is a good thing. The USDA Man said that the snake I saw a couple of weeks ago was probably the same snake and if there had been multiple snakes they would have tried to eat the dead snake and we would have seen evidence of that.
We walked around the house and talked about possible entry points for the snake, The most likely entry is our dyer vent. I'll be calling the housing office to request a screen be installed over the vent.

I wish I had taken pictures of the snake sniffing dog but I was to embarrassed to ask. I'm really glad the snake was found and is not wandering around anymore.