January 30, 2012
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April 25, 2010

The Snakes in Our Midst

By Robin of Berkeley
As I advance in age, my vision gets hazier. Unfortunately, I have a bad habit of not wearing my glasses around the house.

This gets me in trouble when I'm, say, cutting up a vegetable and mistake my thumb for the carrot. Or, in this instance, when I found an unidentified Creature from the Black Lagoon in my living room.

A few months ago, I spotted a piece of fabric in front of my sofa. Since the material was gold and rust like the couch, I assumed that a piece of fabric fell off. But when I bent down to pick it up, the "cloth" ran under the couch.

Now, if you've been reading me for awhile, you can probably guess how I reacted. Here's a pop quiz to see how well you know your average (former) leftist.

Did I:

1.       Calmly grab a flashlight and search under the couch?

2.       Serenely Google information on how to retrieve the beast?

or:

3.       Scream at the top of my lungs and run out of the house?

If you picked number 3, you win.

So, after fleeing the house, I had to return to retrieve my stuff and get to work. There was no trace of "Lizzie." (I surmised that the scaly intruder was a lizard.)

From work, I phoned a company called Critter Control and spoke to a nice lady there named Nancy. She said that there were no lizards in Berkeley in the winter, but she told me to put out one of those sticky rat traps to catch whatever it was. Then she instructed me on how to set Lizzie loose.

Now this was a bit of a problem for me. I'm not exactly the outdoorsy, lizard-loving type. Catching and releasing a reptile was definitely above my pay grade.

I turned to my hubby, Jon, for the removal of Lizzie. But my vegan mate was more worried about potentially hurting the creature than getting it out of our house.

I e-mailed a knowledgeable friend and described my plight. She concurred with Nancy that the creature was not a lizard, but probably a salamander.

Several weeks passed with no sign of "Sally." I breathed a sigh of relief. Sally had probably found her way out as easily as she got in. 

One early morning at 3 am, I couldn't sleep, so I headed to the kitchen for a late-night snack. Walking through the living room, I almost stepped on what was now a very large piece of fabric on the ground. Groggy, with my vision a blur, I bent down close to look, and the thing vanished under the couch. 

To my utter horror, I discovered that "Sally," our sweet little salamander, had morphed into "Obama," a several-foot-long snake. (By the way, the new nickname hasn't been shared with my leftist spouse.)

I called Nancy at Critter Control and told her that the lizard which turned into a salamander had now become a snake.

With obvious exasperation, Nancy said crossly, "Lady, a lizard can't turn into a salamander, and a salamander can't turn into a snake."

I then realized that Nancy was probably tormented each day by the Berkeley brain-addled. The poor thing had to field calls about elephants in bathtubs or rats invading skin surfaces. She didn't need me calling about a lizard that changed into a salamander and then a snake.

I tried to reassure Nancy. "I promise I'm not crazy. I'm a psychotherapist."

Nancy sounded unconvinced. (In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have added that last part because so many shrinks are half-baked.) However, Nancy was kind enough to give me advice about snake removal.

I then informed Jon that I was absolutely certain this time that it was a snake. Discarding forty years of rabid feminism (which I often do in times of need), I instructed him that as my man, he was in charge of jettisoning the reptile.

Jon replied coolly, "Robin, as for the 'alleged' snake that I have not yet seen, clearly, he likes you better. So you should be the one to take him out."

This is how things stand. Not only is there a snake in the White House, but there is a snake in my house. Neither one is welcome, at least by the majority of people in this country.    

Both "Obamas" keep metamorphosing into different life-forms. And I haven't the slightest idea where either one of them originated.

I ask myself, Why now? Given that I have never even seen a snake around the Berkeley flatlands, why has one parked itself in my house?

Is the reptile just a random, freaky act of nature? To borrow from Freud, sometimes a snake is just a snake.

Or, given the insanity of the times, did some maniac deposit the creature in my mail slot? But if so, the serpent would have had to slither through my very cluttered garage, enter my kitchen, then the dining area, and around the corner to finally burrow inside my sofa.

This would require a high level of industriousness. I'm not sure that either "Obama" is capable of this without a multitude of benefactors.

Now if it's true that there are no coincidences, maybe I'm getting some sort of cosmic communication. Could Divine Providence be trying to tell me something?

Snakes symbolize evil. Am I being alerted to something malevolent? But I don't need a snake in my house to warn me of the wickedness all across this land.

It's hard to be certain why this has happened. But I do know that "Obama's" appearance reminds me of a favorite story, a cautionary tale about the snakes in our midst: 

One brutally cold winter, a snake knocked on the door of a house occupied by a little mouse. The mouse yelled out, "Who is it?" and the snake answered, "It's me, the snake. Can I come in? It's freezing out here."  

The mouse asserted, "No you can't come in. Snakes eat mice. If I let you in, you'll eat me."

The snake insisted, "I promise that I won't eat you. I'm just cold and want to come in for the night."

The two went back and forth many times before the mouse finally relented. The snake came into the house and immediately ate the mouse.

The moral of the story: You can't change a being's essential nature. So be very, very careful before you let someone into your house or into your heart.

Because there are bad people who wish us harm, Americans need to be careful and attentive. Of course, these politically correct times have crippled too many citizens in Self Protection 101.

Wasn't it obvious that Obama presented a clear and present danger? The creepy friends, the thug-like atmosphere, the blank history. All people had to do was take off the rose-colored glasses.

But voters chose the Hollywood fantasy of some illusory hope and change. And now it appears that we have a chameleon, a wolf, and, yes, a snake living in the White House.

The wicked go astray from the womb;

they err from their birth, speaking lies.

They have venom like the venom of a serpent,

like the deaf adder that stops its ear,

so that it does not hear the voice of the charmers

or of the cunning enchanter.

Psalm 58

A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a psychotherapist in Berkeley.
on "The Snakes in Our Midst"
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