My Thursday Encounter

So, Thursday afternoon I'm doing laundry. Not usually an exciting occupation, right? Timer goes off, I wander down to the basement laundry room of our building to extract clothes from the dryers. Pull stuff out of the one on the left, close door, shove basket over in front of dryer on the right, so that I am now standing in front of the one on the left, begin removing laundry from second dryer. I usually shake out and fold t-shirts and pants enough to keep them from wrinkling until I can get stuff hung up, so I'm folding shirts into the basket when I hear loud noise coming from upstairs. My first thought is, "I don't even want to know what people in this building are doing now." Then I think, "Oh! Maybe it's the mailman!"

I walk over by the door where I can hear better and sure enough, I recognize the thunk of mail being dropped into the metal boxes upstairs. Cool, I can stop and get that on my way back up. Turn around to finish removing laundry from the dryer...and scream. Just inches from where I had been standing moments before is a SKINNY ORANGE SNAKE peeking out from under the dryer on the left, flicking his narrow tongue at me. The snake continues to stare, his head bobbing a bit and now looking as though he were laughing at me. I carefully step to the far right, scoop the rest of my clothes into the basket and -- almost forgetting my keys in the process -- beat a hasty retreat.

More than an hour later my heart rate still hadn't returned to normal. It's not that I'm necessarily afraid of snakes, they just don't belong in my living space. Not to mention that that is a little more excitement than I am used to doing laundry.

After a bit of Googling, I finally found a pic that looks like the reptile I encountered in my basement. Apparently not poisonous, nor a biter, either. You have to admit, he is kind of pretty -- for a snake. Wouldn't he make a great pair of sandals? *g*