Chuck the Snake

Everyone has stories about roommates with pets -- often an experience from h#ll. Even if you are an animal lover, living with someone who has a pet and doesn't clean up after it is distasteful to say the least. My brother is almost a decade younger than me, so I had already accumulated a few such experiences of my own when I observed his first roommate-pet nightmare.

Chuck quickly outgrew the cage he was brought home in and started wandering the house at will, even breaking through into the air ducts where he disappeared for the day.

I'll never forget the time I visited my brother's new digs for the first time. I remember how I chattered away to my brother when I got there, approving of their choice in finding such a cute little house as I showed myself around the place, saying I would check out the bathroom at the end of my tour. After getting seated, I glanced at the open shelves of the linen closet opposite and saw all those mounds of Chuck coiled up and sleeping on a shelf where the towels should have been.

I will never forgive Hector, or my brother, for that moment.

Hector's relationship with my brother began to hit the shallows at the same time that Hector's enthusiasm in his pet waned. The responsibility for feeding, caging, and cleaning up after him became much less fun and much more of a full-time job -- and Hector didn't much like having one full time job, much less two.

The worst part was that, since Chuck ate his meals whole, it was only a natural effect that they were digested and eliminated in the same way.

Chuck had taken a liking to the warmth of my brother's waterbed, and he was always coming home from work to find the snake sleeping there. He decided that Chuck had to go when he came upon the remains of a defecated rabbit in his sheets. Hector made no protests, and sold him.