The Packrat and the Snake

     The packrat ran out from under the Pfizer juniper bush, rounded the corner of the house, and disappeared under a smaller bush.  From where I stood, it looked like two rat pups were connected to her butt.  They clung to her and bounced over the rocky terrain.

     Strange, I thought.  Pack rats are nocturnal.  They have to be disturbed to come out in the daylight.

     I was up on a section of scaffold working on the soffit of our Kansas house.  I was trying to get the soffit done under the wrap-around roof so I could eventually put a deck there. 

      It was 2007, the first year of my retirement from teaching.  It was late September and the Rockies were on something like a sixteen game winning streak that would come to an end in October with a four game losing streak in the World Series.  

     I could listen to the games on the radio.  The Rockies’ success made for pleasant afternoons as I worked on the soffit.  Then came the snake.

     Seeing the packrat was unpleasant enough.  It meant that the overgrown juniper probably had a collection of twigs, garbage, and anything else the rat could carry.  It wouldn’t be the first time I had to trim up the bush underskirts and dispose of a nasty collection. 

      Once I found a dozen cabinet hinges in a rat’s nest.  They had been taken from a paint bucket of old nails and other metal pieces waiting for a trip to the landfill’s metal pile.  The thought of cleaning out a rat nest was only a minor smear on the otherwise perfect Fall afternoon.

     Then came the snake.  I stopped to watch him glide out from under the bush.  I was glad I was still on the scaffold.  I watched at least three feet of him pass beneath me in approximately the same path the rat had taken.  I eyed the snake’s tail.  No rattles.  That was a relief.

     He disappeared around the corner of the house and went under the same bush the rat had.  I finished fastening the piece of vinyl soffitting to the plywood strips beneath the rafters.  I took my time measuring for the next piece.

    Then I had to get down.  I gave the bushes a wide margin as I headed for the saw.  I measured, marked, and cut another piece of soffitting.  I was all eyes as I approached and mounted the scaffold.  No sign of any of the beasts.  I could concentrate on the baseball game again.

     I fitted the vinyl piece into its slot and held the electric screwdriver over my head as I fastened the vinyl to the wood strips.  Out of the corner of my eye I caught the movement.  The rat with her trailers came back around the corner and scurried beneath the Pfizer from whence she originally appeared. 

     I put down my screwdriver and watched.  I didn’t have to wait very long.  Around the corner came the snake’s head, then the rest of him smoothly gliding along, apparently not in too much of a hurry.  Again he followed the rat’s path and disappeared underneath the Pfizer bush.

     As my work progressed, I had to move the scaffold.  Each relocation took me farther into the jungle of the Pfizer, which ran about a third of the way along the west end of the house and wrapped around the northwest corner. Needless to say, I kept an eye on the bush and the ground when I moved the scaffold.

     It would take another day or two, but eventually I reached the north end of the overhang and the soffit job was done.  There remained the rat’s nest to be removed. 

       After some careful searching, I found the rat nest in the tangle of branches.  Very carefully I trimmed a hole in the bush’s base.  I remembered seeing the bull snakes climb high in the branches of the cottonwoods in Walks Camp park when I was a kid.  I kept an eye on the branches overhead while I knelt and whacked with loppers. 

     I raked the trash that made up the nest out from under the bush and sorted it.  The combustibles went to the burn barrel.  The rocks went back around the house’s foundation.  Everything else went to the landfill.    

     I never saw either of those creatures again.  Upon reflection, I realized that for all my suspicion and loathing of the snake, he had really done me a great favor.  He had ridded me of a great nuisance.  Whether he digested her or she simply departed for safer ground, I don’t know.

     Still, I find myself hard-pressed to love that kind of neighbor, no matter the benefits.