MindSpinner

The brown mouse lives because he declined to die of fright, which ought to be a lesson to us all. We’re not quite sure how he’s doing because he isn’t getting around much, but he’s safe in a very large jar, with a little hankie-sized blanket, a bottle cap full of water and a dozen or so wheat berries for whenever he gets hungry. I found him huddled in the bathroom closet, content to let me scoop him up (with a scoop). He was exhausted, though not visibly injured. He’d already supped full of horrors and nothing could scare him any more, not even a great hairless, long-fingered paw like mine. I’d gotten no farther than the hallway with him when dark-haired daughter intercepted us and announced his adoption, declaring that we couldn’t put him out in the cold. Far be it from me to offer a counter argument - I wouldn’t be able to look in the mirror and recognize myself. So there’s still a mouse in the house.

He brought it for gift to me, after a clattering in the kitchen, brought it limp, its gray tail hanging. He was not murderous with blood on his white teeth or death in his green eye. He had a furry toy to share instead and set it down to play. He expected me to be as charmed as he, and not to yelp when his gift, lightly dropped, up and fled. My reaction proved a puzzlement. He made a game of catch and release, batting the panicked mouse with his white paw, catching it up in his teeth and letting it go again and again, while I tried to conjure a means of removing the mouse alive. Picking up the cat with the mouse yet in his jaws and taking the two of them outside was not an option given that the cat would likely let it drop. Corraling the cat would unleash the mouse to make a beeline for my closet door, hide out in some crevice and live to raise its young in my shoe. Nothing would work - the mouse was far too quick for me alone. “Mouse,” I explained, “you are too scampery to save.”

When the chase retired to the bathroom, I closed the door. What would be would be.

A half an hour later, no mouse. As for the cat, he’d no doubt toyed the mouse at last to death and then saw nothing left to do but dine - as a practical matter. He napped content on the bed beside me for a time while I contemplated my culpability in the matter of the death of a small brown mouse. I haven’t yet pulled out the stove, you see, found the hole, and stuffed it tight with steel wool. No, I have sat here, instead, and sounded words like piano keys, in search of a tune.

For his part, the cat has now wakened, stretched, and dropped to the floor. He patrols the edges of the cabinet in the hall, probing that inch of darkness between furniture and floor, flicking his tail expectantly. The game is still afoot, you see. There’s a mouse in the house.

Perhaps the giftee scampers slower now, and I can catch it and put it out.

On Tuesday I planted trees, three little apple trees, an Enterprise, an Arkansas Black, and a Williams Pride. These are the last trees I will plant, for I’m running out of room on my half acre. In fact, I would have to move some things around just to situate them. The crabapples I planted three years ago had their bark mostly stripped off by a deer, and at least one was clearly just about ready to give up. That one could go. I dug it up and planted a tree in its place. The other has fared a little better, and I like its mostly burgundy foliage, but really, one of the little apple trees needed to be where it stood. The burgundy crabapple could go farther toward the back of the lot, near the woods, and perhaps it would survive. The trunk is badly damaged, but I’ve let a sucker grow tall, swathed in burgundy leaves at the top and green ones further down, and my plan is to saw off the original tree and let the sucker grow to replace it.

I fetched my shovel. Getting a tree out of the ground that has been three years in the ground is not a small endeavor, but it is not as hard as I imagined it would be. I stopped short when I saw the spider.

She was exactly the sort of spider that terrified me when I was a little girl; she was nearly three inches long, black and yellow, with a smart gray velvet vest and black evening gloves. She’d woven her elaborate web from the trunk of the tree to the ground, and there she sat, guarding her tree, in all her eight-legged magnificence.

I took the shovel and explained to her that I had to move the tree. (I talk to creatures, being somewhat short of people.) I tore at her web with the shovel, being careful not to hurt her. I didn’t want to kill her. I didn’t want to tear her web - I know what hard work it is to make a home - but the apple tree had to be planted, and the crabapple had to move. She scuttled with alarming speed up onto the tree. She was clearly devoted to the tree and would not abandon it, whatever came.

What came was a lot of digging and heaving and hoing. She managed to hang on. Keeping a eye on her whereabouts, I gingerly moved her, tree and all, and planted her tree once again. I decided to wait until spring to saw off the original trunk. Planting done and tree quakes over, she hung quite still, as if traumatized.

I wonder what she will do in winter. Today it is suddenly cold, about 35 degrees out. I’ll mulch the trees; perhaps she can burrow into the hardwood mulch and keep warm.

Eastern Hognose snakes turn out to be, in fact, an endangered species. I’m still letting that sink in.

I’m not keen on slaying a member of an endangered species with my hoe or my machete when I find him lolling about in a bed of pepperment and thyme, even if he lacks fur and legs to which I am irrationally partial. (I’m not being sexist about the gender of my snake, by the way, only hopeful, since male snakes don’t lay eggs.)

Maybe I’ll get more used to Hognose if I give him a name. If I call him Mr. Horatio Hognose, for instance, would that help me keep his person in perspective when next we meet? On the other hand, I like the simple name “Wrinkle.” I’ll decide his name when or if I come to have a better look at him. Likely after I scream.

Crocodile Dundee assured me that I’d run less risk of attracting snakes if I removed the “cover” in my yard. The cover of which he speaks is, of course, my garden, and I am not removing it in order to discourage an unwelcome guest. Habitat I have created; inhabitants I will have. Only one option remains. I’m going to have to make my peace with Mr. Horatio Hognose and with the idea of him and his ilk being about. I already knew we had snakes back in the woods; the difference is that now I know this one traversed my garden in order to slip under the deck and into the dogs’ pen. So I have to be prepared to meet him when I’m digging up the carrots or pulling up the grass that’s working its way into the lavender border.

I’m just not sure that looking at six pages of Googled images of Eastern Hognose snakes is sufficient conditioning ;->.

Sundays are the perfect day for leisurely pastoral posts, written after an hour in the garden.

Not this Sunday. I had just finished mowing the grass and putting up the mower when I heard the dogs making a terrible fuss, growling and barking in alarm. I walked to look under the deck, where they were holding forth in the corner. They had something cornered, and that something did not have fur.

I couldn’t see so clearly through lattice and wire, but it looked very like a snake, and there were the dogs not two feet from its nose. I ran up the steps into the kitchen and through the garage to get to their pen. They have access beneath the deck for shade and shelter there, and I could just see them getting bitten by this snake. From the other side of the deck I could see more clearly the reared head, black and gray, spread like a cobra. I argued with myself that I couldn’t be seeing a head spread like a cobra because there aren’t any cobras around here. And the markings were wrong.

I called frantically to the dogs, but they were intent on the snake. Finally, the one that hears broke away to come toward me, but he was torn and didn’t want to leave the action. It took me a minute or so to get him to come, to scoop him up and carry him into the house. The deaf dog was more difficult. I could yell all I liked, but that would make no difference. I grabbed the yellow plastic bag that held our new yellow pages phone book, ran back out and waved it frantically, still shouting despite that fact that shouting could make no difference. Finally, the deaf crusader saw me and came away from the reared snake.

With both dogs safely inside and the snake still under the deck, it was one of those moments one rues being single. I have no gun with which to kill a snake, and the only way to get at this one would be to crawl under the deck, which is less than 2 feet off the ground in the back corner where the snake was.

Because I didn’t know what else to do, I called 911.

The 911 operator took my information, did a quick consultation, and returned to the phone to say that the police wouldn’t come to my house to take care of the snake unless it was in my house. I didn’t see inviting it in as an option. “What would you do if there was a snake underneath your deck,” I asked. “Whom can I call?

I was given two numbers for Fish and Wildlife. The second number raised an answer. Fish and Wildlife had someone in my county on call. His name was Benny B.

Benny B’s wife answered the phone and said that Benny B. took care of nuisance animals, but he didn’t do snakes. If I were Mrs. Benny B, I might have said the same thing.

“I don’t do snakes, either,” I said. Just that very minute I was wishing for Crocodile Dundee. Or maybe Harrison Ford in Six Days, Seven Nights.

I called Fish and Wildlife back to tell them that Billy was a dud, and they gave me two numbers for Crocodile Dundees in neighboring counties. The first was a hit. Here was a guy who likes snakes. Here was a guy who would come out to get this snake in the dark, even if he had to crawl under the deck. $75 for the trip. $125 for a nonpoisonous snake. $175 for a poisonous snake. Did I still want him to come?

“There is a snake under my deck,” I reiterated. What sort of silly question was “Do you still want me to come?”

Forty-five minutes later Crocodile Dundee and his wife showed up. Croc donned his snakeproof leggings, looked all around with a flashlight in every corner of the garden. He crawled under the deck with bare, tattoed arms exposed, and prowled about in the yard, all the way back to the back of the lot, which is virtually snake paradise. He lifted the doghouse and looked underneath.

He did not find the snake. I hope I don’t find it either, but I suspect I may one day, while out pulling weeds. I looked up native snakes on the Web and found my snake, an Eastern Hognose - not poisonous to any significant degree, not aggressive, and not unlikely to roll over and play dead, but capable of spreading its neck cobra-style and thus managing to terrify me.

As he turned to go to his car, Crocodile told me the good news about having a snake, and he meant it, “You won’t have any rats or mice,” he grinned.

Callooh. Callay.

So which would you opt for?