Thin blue snake
by Kathryn Mockler
[ poetry - october 09 ]
The thin blue snake
had a white stripe down its back.
Actually the snake was aqua,
but I just kept calling it blue.
It followed me
from the kitchen to the living room
and kept getting
caught under my feet
like an ordinary house pet.
My stepmother said: "I like snakes."
I wanted to shove
the snake down her throat.
The least she could do
was call my dad at the casino
and get him down here
to deal with this.
"Don't they have
people we can call?" I asked.
"I like snakes,"
she said again.
This time with a smirk.
"Maybe we could
put it in a bucket," I suggested."
And then maybe
we could get someone
to take it away."
I walked
to the enclosed
back porch to find a bucket.
The thin blue snake
followed me.
After an hour of looking
through old furniture,
newspapers, boxes, bikes,
and exercise equipment,
I came to the
conclusion that
there wasn't a bucket
in the back porch.
As I walked to the utility closet,
the thin blue snake
followed me.
He was breathing heavily
as if the excitement
was just too much.
At the back of the closet
was an old brown bucket.
When I reached
for the handle and tried to lift it,
the bucket wouldn't budge.
I tried three more times
before I realized
it was filled with cement.
So, I decided
to forget about the bucket
and call pest control.
At first,
the lady on the phone
said that they did catch snakes
and take them away,
but when I told her
it was a thin blue snake,
she said they catch and take away
every kind of snake
except thin blue snakes.
"What am I supposed to do?" I
asked.
She said: "There's nothing we can do.
Our hands are tied
because it's in the legislation."
I said: "What legislation?"
She said:
"Pest control legislation."
After I hung up the phone,
I looked down
at the thin blue snake
and said: "Why don't you
just go back
where you came from?"
I decided to leave
through the back door
to avoid my stepmother
who was shaving her legs dry
with the bathroom door open.
It sounded
like she was shaving
a piece of cardboard.
I tried not to think about
the bits of hair and dry skin
that now littered
the bathroom floor.
It was four o'clock,
and I was already late to meet
my friends at the bar.
I walked downtown
so that the thin blue snake
would get tired
and stop following me.
But no such luck.
As I approached
the patio of the bar,
I decided to use a new tactic:
the silent treatment.
"What's that thing?"
someone asked
as soon as I sat down.
"What on earth
are you talking about?" I said.
"That blue thing
you brought into the bar."
"Oh. It's a thin blue snake,"
I said casually.
"A what?" someone else said.
Before I could answer,
the waitress
asked if I wanted a drink.
"A Guinness," I replied.
"Guinness has lots of iron in it,"
I said to the table,
but no one
was paying any attention to me;
they were playing
with the thin blue snake.
"Oh, don't bother
with him," I said.
"He's so cute,"
someone said.
"I like snakes,"
someone else said.
Just as the snake was
lapping up all the attention,
a bouncer came over.
"Whose thin blue snake is that?"
he asked gruffly.
Everyone at the table
pointed at me.
"I'm sorry," he said,
"but we can't have any
thin blue snakes in here."
He put his hands
on his waist
to emphasize the point.
He looked
like a bodybuilder.
"I didn't bring it in.
It's been following me all day."
"I'm sorry,
but I'm going to have to ask you
and your friend to leave."
"What?" I said.
"It's company policy," he said.
"If the inspectors come,
we could get a fine."
"What if just the snake left?"
I suggested.
As soon as the words
left my mouth, I regretted
saying them.
Everyone started in on me.
They said things like
"How could you do that?"
and "Why are you so selfish?"
and on and on and on.
So I got up
and left the patio.
As I walked away from the bar,
the snake trailing behind me,
I heard the bouncer
say to my friends,
"If it were up to me,
I would have
let the thin blue snake stay.
I like snakes," he said.
And then everyone
at the table agreed
that everyone likes snakes.
