Eve

Grr, ok, I'm going to steal an idea from a friend of mine and give you a random story that is probably not representative of me in any way. And it'll be long. Here we go: "Snake in the Underwear." Thirteen-year-old me was playing with Motor, a soft-furred tabby with a bad eye and a gymp leg, on the king sized mattress lying on the floor in my parents' room. All was well until Motor abruptly went stock still, alert the way cats get when they are hunting. With quivering tail, he began to stalk towards the edge of the bed. Following his gaze, I saw what appeared to be an enormous lizard, starring back at me balefully from it's place behind my parents' dresser. It took a moment for me to register the sheer size of the thing, and realize that it was, in point of fact, a very large snake. Now, first of all, I was a little startled to see a snake in our otherwise urban setting. And secondly, my half-blind, gympy cat was about to take on a potentially poisionous snake. This was unacceptable.I immediately took action, moving carefully, I put my hands softly around Motor's torso. He paid me no mind. Ever so slowly, I closed my hands about him, begining to pick him up. At that point, it suddenly dawned on Motor that the the mother of all snakes had somehow slipped up behind him and had him in a death coil. He went berserk. He knew, as only instincts can tell you, that death was at hand unless he could convince that monsterous snake to let him go. I bear several scars from his efforts at persuasion. However, I, being the stubborn and, some argue, masochistic cat-lover that I am, continued to hold on for dear life, all the while yelling for my mom. Now here is where things got hectic. My mother had a tendancy to be a little excitable. So when I casually mentioned, "there's a snake in the room. Motor's going nuts; can you get me a towel??", all she heard was "SNAKE" (The towel was for the double purpose of holding a writhing, scratching cat, and staunching the blood dripping off my hands.) There then followed a seemingly endless exhange of "where's the snake?!" and, "a towel, mom, a TOWEL!" Only on my 5th or 6th, "For God's sake, a TOWEL PLEASE!" did mom register the growing number of scratches I was sporting.Shortly thereafter, with Motor safely tossed out of the room wrapped in a towel, we went in search of the snake. It had by then made good it's dissapearance. It was not behind the dresser. So, we decided that the best course of action would be to remove the bottom drawer, which happened to be my father's underwear drawer, and see if the snake was hiding beneath the dresser. Well, it turns out the snake had taken up residence in said drawer. Being of a now pragmatic mindset, we saw the advantage in that. Like two little soldiers, we picked of the drawer and, in unison, marched outside with it, prefunctarily spilling it's contents to the grass. There, amongst a pile of tighty-whities, lay a very disgruntled, 5 foot ratsnake. We waited expectantly, but he would not move. Deciding that dad would not wish to come home to a snake in his underwear, we retreived my grandfather's decorative fencing sword (he was an interesting man, with a love of collecting odd knives and swords), and, spearing the underwear in which the snake was coiled, we picked both up, heading towards a nearby patch of undeveloped land. We must have looked rather odd, mom and I walking purposefully with a snake at arms length hanging out of a pair of white underwear. Upon reaching our destination, we left the underwear and the snake in the tall grass, then headed to the house, piled the remaining briefs back in the drawer, the drawer back into the dresser, and thought no more of it.It did come up once again when dad approached us, wondering why he was picking grass out of his underwear.