A Snake in The House

             (In Siddhi's Persona)

It was a rain-drenched day when all one wanted to do was to curl up with a good book with that secure feeling which comes of being safely dry indoors while heavy rain-drops beat a frantic throb on the roof-shades and the rest of the world is getting soaked to the bone. 

I had just checked indoors from school and had beaten the rain to it by a few rain-drops. Ginger had gone back to lazing in his basket when he was through with his protocol of getting all excited over seeing I and Deetya get back from school in one piece (or two pieces if you please) after having  made it through another day at  School. He had reared up on me, in the process marking my white skirt with muddy paw-prints.  He obviously thought that school was some kind of concentration camp that I and Deetya were sent to each morning for he would put up a most pitiful and complaining barking when we left for school. From the looks of it he had been having a romp in the rain and mud in the garden and had managed to smuggle himself indoors with muddy paws penetrating mom's surveillance. 

Mom was the only person who all of us really took seriously when it came to getting caught indoors with muddy shoes, feet or paws. Papa was the most frequent culprit who could never remember to take his uniform boots off outside and attracted fire from Mom often - unless she happened to be in a particularly forgiving mood - which sometimes happened if someone had complimented her garden that day. 

Ginger on the other hand in his street-smartnesss would give Mom a baleful look with his soft brown eyes if scolded for getting muddy pawprints on the carpet. Not that baleful looks got him very far as far as I could see since he got yelled at by Mom just the same as Papa did.

             I had just changed out of school clothes when a piercing shriek resounded through the house. I recognised the voice as Mom's. Since Papa wasn't back from office yet, it couldn't have been his muddy shoes that elicited that high decibel sound. Ginger had already bounded out of the room to present his alibi - that he hadn't been in the garden. 

It didn't seem to be muddy boots or paws that had perturbed Mom this time. We found her on her hands and feet warily peering under a cupboard in the dining room . Dropping on to all fours and bending low I spotted a coiled black shape about a couple of inches thick under the cupboard. 

The snake seemed to take his curling up seriously, even if he hadn't a book to do it with, because he appeared not to have been alarmed. and half of him was unwinding while the other half rewound around the first at an easy sluggish pace. I had read that snakes couldn't actually hear. At least not in the way that we do. They merely pick up vibrations off the ground. So it was probably the vibrations from my feet and Ginger's that caused even this slight movement rather than Mom's oral outburst. Ginger barked ominous threats at the serpent, all from a safe distance of course, which I suspected were more to earn brownie points with Mom rather than with any serious intent of scaring the snake away. He probably knew that he was in for a scolding from her when she saw the muddy paw prints on my uniform skirt. 

Meanwhile Sanu Aunty, our neighbour had heard Mom's vocal performance and had rushed in through the dining room door that opened on to the backyard to check. Sanu Aunty took one look at the snake and jumped aboard the dining table before promptly passing out on it. Mom said something that sounded like ". . water . ." and took a step towards the kitchen seemingly to fetch some water to revive Sanu Aunty followed by an equally prompt step backwards when she realised that adjacent to the door leading to the kitchen stood the cupboard under which lurked the redoubtable reptile. So Sanu Aunty was left to recover on her own. All this while, the subject of all this pandemonium appeared to be not the least interested in the proceedings being too busy trying to tie himself into knots.

                While we were quite used to frogs and lizards sharing their evenings with us and had seen a good many snakes in the garden and the trees around, we had never actually had a snake inside the house before. This one had probably come in after a frog repast and had just settled down for a post-lunch siesta when we got into the act.

                Mom had by now gathered her wits and in her usual cool tone commanded me to fetch the camera. This I did promptly and we did manage to capture some footage of the coiling mass. Meanwhile Sanu Aunty recovered and the snake probably tiring of posing for me glided out from under the cupboard and made straight for the open door heading for the back-yard. It was then that I really saw him in full form. Over seven feet long and jet black in colour he swiftly moved across the dining room floor and out of the door. Having made his exit he smoothly moved into the grass and was hidden to view. 

Ginger of course wanting to consolidate on whatever favour his bluster may have earned him with Mom continued to vituperate from within the dining room doorway . . .