I guess it is inevitable when the building where you work is near wetlands.  Add some balmy autumn days that let your co-workers leave all the doors open, measure out some cooling nighttime temperatures, and mix well.  The results of this recipe?  Not a casserole or a cookie or a canapé.  Nope.

 

It’s

 

a

 

warehouse

 

full

 

of

 

SNAKES.

 

Creepy slithery scary little snakes.  Not just outside, but inside.  Sliding over wooden pallets, secreting themselves under copiers, curling up in the middle of the floor where, if you aren’t looking where you are walking, you could very easily step on one. 

 

There was one less than fifteen feet from my desk.

 

This is not cool, my friends.  The sentence “I do not like snakes” doesn’t even begin to describe the utter terror that makes my heart leap into my throat and my skin crawl and my voice squeak up into the Mariah-Carey-stratosphere when I see a snake.  I do not even want to be in the same zip code as a snake.  I do not like the thought of there being a possibility of me opening a desk drawer or moving my computer keyboard or taking some toner off a shelf and discovering a snake.

 

I’m sure my vacationing boss would hear my screams all the way down in Missouri.

 

Apparently there have been snakes in the warehouse for the past two days.  I did not know that until this afternoon when I saw my first little interloper.  (I know.  I was shocked that I didn’t run shrieking out to my car the moment I found out.)  A wholesaler evicted that one for me.  Yeah, like I was going to pick it up and throw it out the door.  Hah!  Insects, spiders, those I can smack and kill and flick into a wastebasket.  Snakes – no way am I gonna do anything that alerts those little buggers to the fact that I am anywhere in the vicinity.

 

Especially since (if the Warehouse Manager is correct) some of them are baby rattlesnakes.  Baby rattlesnakes that do not have rattles on the end of their tails (who knew?), so they are slithering around looking like harmless cousins of garter snakes, until **CHOMP** they decide to find out if you have a flavor.  And then you can’t call 911 because your hands are going numb, and as you begin to feel lightheaded and the room starts spinning you realize you are wearing dingy old cotton undies and all of the doctors and nurses are going to laugh because whatever antivenin they give you for the snakebite will end up being delivered by a big hypodermic needle in your… end.

 

Who do you call when there are snakes in your workplace?  Human Resources?  OSHA?  Samuel L. Jackson?  And can you call in sick to work because you’re scared of snakes?  Is snake-o-phobia considered an authentic medical condition, like an emotional disorder, so I could take the day off?  Or maybe it’s a recognized handicap, and I could call in under the Americans with Disabilities Act?

 

Because I seriously do not want to go to work tomorrow.

 

Snakes.  **shiver**

 

Somebody get me a fang-proof bodysuit and a big bottle of wine.