I am sleeping in bed this morning covered in a pile of boys. Someone is laying across my feet and another is curled up between my knees and I’m sharing a pillow with someone who's drooling a little. I wake up, but don't move.
I can hear Scott in the shower. He turns off the water and then proceeds to install a new toilet, rip out the vanity and replace some drywall. At least that's what it sounded like. He is so incredibly noisy in the morning. On the rare occasion when we’re allowed to sleep past five am, he always manages to wake some, if not all the boys, up before he leaves for work. So, I continue to lay perfectly still hoping, waiting and praying that none of the boys wake up. As he slams open the bathroom door and busts into the bedroom, I hear Petey start to cry (from the master closet, aka nursery). Without moving, I hiss at Scott to hurry up and get out of here without making anymore noise.
He leaves the bedroom, but proceeds onto the kitchen with his remodeling project. I really have no idea what he's doing out there, but I guarantee he could never ever sneak up on anything. After slamming the kitchen door, he moves onto the garage. Why slip out the front door when you could run the garage door opener and try to wake up at least one more little boy before departing.
Eventually, I hear him pull out of the driveway and I close my eyes and drift back into a few more minutes of bliss. A few minutes turns into an hour. I awaken again still covered by little boys, except now the one curled up between my knees feels damp and warm. I've just been peed on. unfortunately not the first and predictable, not the last. This should be, but isn’t incredibly alarming to me. I imagine real moms would jump up, strip the child and the bed, remake the bed (this would require owning more than one pair of sheets, I don't) fly to the washer, soothe the traumatized child and then disinfect themselves. I however, three hours later, still haven't stripped the bed.
As usual, I'm not getting to the point of my story.
One at a time, I slip out from under the little paper weights. I'm amazed how I can put them into their own beds at night and wake up some mornings with five people and a cat all piled into a bed. Unlike their father, theses guys inherited the sneaky gene. Anyway, I slip my feet out from under one boy. I wait for a few seconds sensing any movements from him and then slowly start to roll out and around the wet boy between my knees. He stirs... I freeze. Soon his heavy breathing returns and I continue to roll out. I freeze again as the side of my face comes in contact with the drool pool accumulating on my pillow from boy number three. Yuck, I prefer the urine over the drool. Urine is warm and mostly sterile while oral secretions are cold, stinky and germ ridden. Once again, getting off focus.
OK, I successfully slip off the side stepping into the empty toddler bed. I stand at the side of the bed and shake my head. I see that the wet boy is Finn. I peel back his jammies to see why his diaper has leaked. Oh, it's leaked because he's wearing two pair of Tommy's underwear and no diaper. Not even potty trained during the day yet, certainly not ready for night. I guess he decided that the diaper I put on him last night wasn't a good idea.
Anyway, I'm a little giddy. I love being up early in the morning and having the rare opportunity to have a hot shower without worrying about who's wrestling, going outside or cooking unattended. I navigate the bathroom with my eyes closed. I love to do this when I'm still half asleep. I turn on the shower, undress and step into complete paradise. I love cranking the water to the hottest setting just to see if I can stand it. Today I can, I lather up with my lavender body scrub eyes still closed breathing in the intoxicating aroma of relaxation. As I feel the water start to pool over the tops of my feet, I'm not too concerned. As usual, we're a little behind on home maintenance. We usually don't fix things until their completely broke, plugged or leaking. So currently our drain has been just a little sluggish. Not anything that's gonna concern me and ruin my spa shower or rain on my parade. I can feel the steam billowing past my face out of the shower probably enveloping all the mirrors and surfaces in fog. I can only assume this as I've been in the shower for about 10 minutes and still haven't opened my eyes.
Next, I feel something reptilian slithering around my ankle and trying to climb up my leg. Just typing this makes my skin crawl. My eyes fly open and I freeze as I stare down at my soapy legs and ankles.
A WIGGLY...
BLACK...
SLIMEY...
WET...
SNAKE...
My breath stops, relaxing shower OVER! I retract my left foot and my shower partner retreats to the other end of the tub. The way he swims makes me vomit in my mouth. It's that very reptilian, flicking and slithering. I’m still spitting as I step out of the tub. Naked, wet and soapy I run out to the kitchen. for, of all things, my camera. I can't find it, so I settle for my cell phone, I call Scott, voicemail, shoot. Water still running, I walk into the steamy bathroom and assess the situation. I can feel my heart pounding as I look over the edge. I'm waiting for him to spring up and attach himself to my face. Luckily, he doesn't do that. He's just swimming around.
I walk back out into the living room, still wet and dripping. I'm startled as someone from the sofa yells, Hey mom, why don't you have any clothes on?"
Because, there's a snake in the shower
So why are you naked?
Because there's a snake in the shower
Your not allowed to wear clothes around snakes?
Oh, I guess that puts my priorities into perspective, I realize that even the best exterminators do usually wear clothes. Although I quickly remind myself that most exterminators also probably do their laundry on a regular basis. Laundry around our house fits into the same category as the maintainance. It usually doesn't get done until it's a flaming disaster. So needless to say, I don't really have any clothes to put on. A slip into yesterday's dirty scrubs.
I look toward the unimpressed unexcitable spectator on the sofa. I'm wondering why he doesn't think a snake in the shower is a strange thing. Gavin really isn't our household wildlife catcher. That's Tommy, but he's still drooling on my pillow fast asleep. Gavin isn't really impressed or interested in wild life. But I decide to give it a try. One of the best parts about having kids is that you can convince them to do all the things you are secretly afraid of. As long as you don't act scared, they have no idea that they should be scared. This being said I start to work on Gavin.
Me: Ummm... Gavin, as I told you earlier, there's a small creature in the bathtub. I'm gonna give you this Tupperware container. If you could just scoop him up and put the lid on really tight, I’d appreciate it. Try really hard not to drop him, he’s probably fragile.
Gavin: Can I have a corndog? I'm hungry.
Me: I would really like if you could just get that little guy out of the tub first, he's probably scared and I don't want him to get hurt. (translation: I'm scared to death of that thing in the bathroom, I need you to be a man and go in there and wrestle it, capture it and get it out of my house)
Gavin: Fine, but I want two corndogs for doin this.
It's 6:30 am, but at this point I would have given him the entire box of corndogs, a chocolate cake and a BMW. But rule number 507 in my casual parenting manual says, never show your fear and never ever show desperation.
Me: If you can successfully get him out to the backyard I suppose I could pay you two corndogs, if you promise not to tell the little boys that you ate corndogs for breakfast.
Gavin: Deal
I hand over said Tupperware and Gavin proceeds into the steaming, lavender scented snake enclosure. I wait nervously in the kitchen frozen corndogs in hand. I'm listening for sounds of distress. I just hear water splashing.
Gavin: Hey mom, he has legs.
Me: What? Just get the cover on, tight.
Gavin proudly enters the kitchen with his catch. It's frantically swimming around the container flopping into the sides and trying to get out the top. The cover falls to the ground and I momentarily panic.
Gavin: Mom, are you scared?
Me: Me? No, I like snakes, but let's set him on the counter and get that cover on again.
Gavin: Look at his legs
Me: No, put the container down, ummmm... You need to eat these corndogs.
I snap the lid on tight and instruct Gavin to carry him outside. Elliot (our orange cat) follows with interest. I see my camera on the way out and grab for it.
Elliot was most curious about this creature. I had to lock him in the house for the release.
So there it stood. I was quite relieved to have the mystery creature out of my shower, but not forward thinking enough to release it outside of our fenced in backyard
So here’s the big reveal…
Ok, so not as scary when you’re not the one showering with it, but still gross enough to make me spit as I type this. He would have been even longer, but he was missing most of his tail.
After a few more photographs for identification purposes (this may as well be educational), we were ready to release him.
Apparently this is wear I start shooting in black and white. Most people save black and whites for classic settings. After all, you what’s more classic than a little wildlife removal mission? I guess in my nervous twitching I must have hit some setting on my camera and started shooting in black and white.
So Gavin gives him the final dump into the grass.
Be free little disgusting creature, be free…
and he wiggled away.
Gavin and I went inside and researched him a little. So it wasn’t really a snake, the little creepy cousin to the snake, a SKINK. Ewwww. I hate that word. SKINK, the name really does him justice though. Slinky, Snaky and gross. Contrary to popular belief, they don’t usually shower with humans and definitely never has there been a recorded case where a skink has sprung up and attacked a human’s face. I think I should email Dr Seuss's people because, There’s a Skink in my Shower sounds like an excellent addition to his children's’ book collection.
So after much excitement, research, discussion, a few more boys waking up I’m in the kitchen elbow deep in French toast batter. I’m teaching Gavin, Tommy and Finn how to make French toast. My parenting technique focuses on teaching my children life skills to ready them for the real world. Shouldn’t all 2, 5 and 8 year olds know several reliable breakfast recipes? I think so. So when my cell phone rings, I wipe the eggs from my hands. I locate the phone under some eggshells and low and behold, it’s the real man of the house, Scott.
How’s your morning he wants to know.
Well….
Me: Did you notice anything strange when you took a shower this morning?
Scott: Oh, you mean that giant lizard thing in the bathtub?
Me: Yeah that… You didn’t want to tell me about it before you left the ho
use this morning?
Scott: Oh, I was gonna tell you, but you told me to be quiet and leave before I woke up any more boys.
Me: OK, well let’s just get this straight. Feel free to wake up every single person in this house and even the neighbors for that matter if there’s ever another reptile in the shower!!!
After our French toast Gavin continued to educate the rest of the boys on all things Skink. He caught my attention as he explained that when being chased by a predator, the skink will “drop” it’s tail. The tail actually becomes disconnected and continues to wiggle around on the floor to distract the predator while the tailless skink slithers away to safety. Interesting fact yes, but I thought back to a week ago when I tipped up the sofa to sweep under it and in the giant pile of corndog sticks, match box cars, one banana peel, books, dirt and playing cards was one shriveled up three inch long lizard tail. At the time I questioned it, but didn’t really give it much thought until now. That means I’ve taken, not one, but roughly four showers with the skink. Elliot must have captured him in the garden, brought him in through the cat door, had a showdown in the living room, been fooled by the old detaching tail trick and lost his catch. No wonder Elliott was so interested.
So history will probably repeat itself as I released the Skink about eight feet from the cat door with Elliot watching from the window.
In a house full of small children and a crazy mother, nothing is ever as it seems.
If a bedroom looks spotless and the boys swear they’ve cleaned it…
look under the bed, they’ve probably just relocated the mess.
If it looks like you’re husband has spent the day catching up on the four foot laundry pile…
check the garbage, he probably just threw out the clothes.
And most importantly, if you think you’ve stumbled upon the illusive, (I’m the only one awake, nothing bad can happen) luxurious, no worries shower…
look down, most likely there’s a Skink in your shower.
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