Three days later I was down at the reptile sanctuary (still wearing my trusty ski jacket - still unrepaired) when, for reasons I won't go into, I was handed Jake, a rather handsome red corn snake, to look after for a while. At first he was happy just to stay in my hands (possibly until he was satisfied his new "handler" wasn't going to drop him), then he started making his way up my body.
As long as he kept out of my face, I wasn't really concerned where he was going.
At some point, he headed over my right shoulder and started down my back. Well, the front part of him did; the tail end was still infront of me.
Eventually I decided I ought to find out where, exactly, Jake's head had got to. I tried to look over my right shoulder to my back, but that's not actually that easy. I thought I could feel him on the back of my arm but, no, I couldn't see him. Then I traced upwards from his tail ....
Yes, he'd found the small gap in the stitching of my jacket! By that time, Jake's head was somewhere near my right elbow, in the darkness and warmth of the lining of my ski jacket.
As a snake's scales are uni-directional we couldn't just pull him out, but had to undo a bit more of the stitching to retrieve him without damage.
Once he was out and my jacket was somewhere safe, Jake was happy to wrap himself around my hips, with a bit of a nose/tail overlap, like a rather exotic low-slung belt. From there he proceeded to make complete circuits of me at the rate of one every 30 minutes or so.
Eventually - and somewhat reluctantly - I had to un-belt him and hand him back. However, when we left that evening we had with us a young lavendar corn snake (called Ian, after Pike) who we have been asked to train up as a "party snake" for the sanctuary!
1 comment:
Can't believe you don't have a picture of your temporary belt.
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