Sticky Situation

My 13 year old daughter really wanted a pet of her own. I’m not talking a dog, or a cat. We have those. She was thinking something more like a rat or a snake. So, I took her down to the pet store to take a look at some of the snakes and rats and to get an idea on prices for them. After we were done, she was set on the idea of getting a small snake. Simple enough. I told her as soon as she got the tank set up for it, we would go pick it up. We already had a tank and stuff for it, just needed to set it up.

The next day, I get a phone call from her saying she got a snake. Her and her friend found a garter snake somewhere and brought it home. They found the tank I had and assembled it with a heating rock, sand, water dish and light.

Later that night, she calls me downstairs to help her with the snake. I’m thinking maybe she wants to hold it, or clean the water out or something. Maybe, it got out and she needs help finding it and putting it back.

I go downstairs and she tells me she thinks the snake is dead.
“Why would think that?” I said. “What is the snake doing?”.

She says “he is just laying there not moving. He is stuck to the tape.”

“Tape? What tape?” I said.

“The tape I used to cover the hole in the light cover.”

The light is a small fluorescent light for a fish tank. The cover for the light has a large hole in the back for a filter to fit in, maybe 1” wide by 6” long. She says the snake crawled up the cord for the heating rock, and out the hole behind the light. So to fix this, she got some tape out of my tool box (black electrical tape) and put multiple strips of it over the hole until it was all covered so the snake has no hole to get out of.

Putting on my CSI hat, this is my conclusion:

The snake worked its way up the cord and to the top where it got out last time, however, this time it tried to push the tape out of the way with its head, doing this to the under side of the tape (aka: sticky side). Logically, its head became stuck to the tape. (almost as dumb as a cat.)

Without having any arms or legs to use, the snake slithered its body up to the underside of the tape in attempt to pry its head off. In doing this, the entire snake had fallen victim to the stickiness of the tape.

The time of the incident is not known, as my daughter was not keeping an eye on the snake all day. However, it was discovered in the predicament a few short moments before I was notified.

At this point, I knew I had only two options.

1- Attempt to carefully peel the snake off the tape.
2- Ball up the tape with the snake lifelessly attached to it and toss it.

As I investigated the snake, I didn’t see any movement from him indicating any signs of breathing or life itself. However, I couldn’t just let my daughters pet she had put so many meaningful minutes into all be in vain.

So, being the good dad that I am, I put on my “Emergency Response Team” hat and went to work.

Starting with its head, I started to pull it away from the tape. As I did this, the tape held on to the skin of the snake. This was not good. I continued to pull hoping that maybe the tape would eventually let go. This was not the case. I figured the snake sheds its skin anyway, right? So I am just helping it along. Maybe a little pre mature to start shedding, but what do you do? The snake had to come off if it was going to have any chance at all.

Once the snake was completely off, I knew right then and there it was gone. However, I laid the body in the water with its head up on the heating rock and told my daughter to keep an eye on him to see if he moves at all.

After 30 minutes of checking in on him, I pronounced him dead. I figured this would devastate her, however, she is a tough kid and really didn’t have enough time to bond with the poor little sucker anyway. She just took him to the garbage outside and tossed him away like he was an old shoelace.

Since then, she has not mentioned a word about getting another one. Maybe she has had her fill, but I’m not going to ask.

I put my “beer drinking” hat back on and went back to life.

The moral of the story here is, be careful how you solve problems. You could find yourself in some pretty sticky situations if your not careful. (having arms and legs wouldn’t hurt either).