Aug 3, 2017 4 min read

It was as close as I’d come to wrecking on my bike in years. A wreck would have been preferable, considering the options that flashed before me at that moment.

I was on the Montour Trail, two miles from the end of my ride, lost in my thoughts, pedaling at a fast rate, I might add, when there it was: a blacksnake stretched across the trail. It was long enough to span the entire six-foot width of the path and then some. My heart seized up when I spotted it, and I jammed on the brakes, stopping just inches from it. A second later and I would have run over its midsection, causing the snake to curl itself around either my front wheel or, more creepily, my right leg, and there would have been screaming.

I am afraid of snakes. Snakes and spiders and elevators. I’m a pretty typical human in that regard, my phobias the stuff of cliché. Maybe the snake thing is biblical – the fear of the serpent having been coiled into our DNA by Adam and Eve, but if that’s where these fears started, shouldn’t we all be afraid of apples, too?

I grew up in in a house in the woods, a beautiful spot with enough wildlife to keep our dad busy. He was always doing battle with something: groundhogs under the shed, gypsy moths, tent caterpillars, grinnies (that’s what he called chipmunks) and a woodpecker that pecked away at the siding on our house. And there were snakes – a few of which memorably found their way into our basement. Let’s just say they were not welcome there.

Once during my teenage years, while sunning myself on the back patio, our dog began barking at me. Several times I shushed her and she persisted. I opened my eyes to find a very large snake essing its way toward my head. I stood up and backed away and waved my arms – following the advice about what to do when you encounter a grizzly bear in the woods. The snake slithered into the grass. I never felt the same about that patio after that.

“But blacksnakes are sweet and they eat mice,” said the farmer when I told him about my bike trail encounter. He would not have been run off by a snake on the patio, and would likely have allowed a snake to stay in the basement. But understand the farmer: when tarantulas got into his house in the Argentina outback, he did not step on them or clobber them with a frying pan, but gently ushered them out the door. He said they were the size of his hand, and furry. We all have relationship deal breakers: for some it’s looks, or lack of work ethic. Mine would be large, hairy spiders or snakes as houseguests. Had I not been somewhere in the picture, he might have let them stay.

I told my friend Stu about my bike trail snake encounter, and he offered that twice in the past several years a blacksnake has gotten into his house. One was found in the kitchen and the other in the front hallway. He called the police to come and get the first one, and had his wife get rid of the second one.

“I handed her a broom and told her to sweep the snake out the door,” he said, without a trace of shame in his voice. I don’t blame him. Those things are scary.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.