This oughta do it

Our new snake cage lid-

A person I was chatting with in an online parenting forum recommended this set up.  It's a pegboard top with scrap wood around the edges.  It cost only 70 cents for materials at the home store.  Bungee straps hold the boards down so nothing can get out.  It isn't pretty, but it will work, I hope.

The Great Snake Escape

I walked by our snake cage in the evening and thought “I should really put a heavy book on top of the lid” but then I second guessed myself.  I really should have listened.

A couple of hours later we were getting ready for bed when I thought that I would just check on the snake.  Rob and I took off the lid and I noticed one corner of the latch was undone.  Strange.  We took out his hidey place.  Not there.  Then we sifted through some bedding.  Not there.  Then I started to worry.  We took out the newspaper in the bottom and shook it out.  Not there.  OH CRAP!

Our snake had escaped!

It was already 11:30 at night.  It had been dark in the kitchen where his cage is, so he could have crawled anywhere.  First we took everything off the kitchen counter top near the cage.  Nothing.  Then we pulled out the fridge, stove, and a floating cabinet.  Rob looked for a working flashlight which was surprisingly hard to find.  We shined it into all of the nooks and crannies we could find in the appliances.  Still no snake.  Then we started rifling through all of the cabinets that he could have crawled into.  I noticed that there are quite a few small openings that go into the floor below the kitchen.  That’s not good.  At this point I was seriously considering trying to remove the dishwasher, because there’s a good sized gap next to it.

After about 20 minutes we had checked the entire kitchen.  We stopped to say a quick prayer and started looking again.  Rob thought he should look in the sink, so he shined his flashlight into the drain and voila!  There’s the snake, wrapped around the garbage disposal.  So in my least brilliant move of the night I flicked on the light switch next to the sink, you know the one that’s right next to the disposal and easy to confuse?  I about gave Rob a heart attack!  Good thing I picked the right switch or we would have had snake soup.  Ew.  Then I unplugged the disposal, because I should have done that first.  D’oh.  Then I unattached the pipes that go to the dishwasher and drain.  I didn’t want him to crawl in there.

At first we tried putting a dead baby rat (his food) in the sink and turning off the lights to see if he’d come out.  No luck.  Then finally I grabbed a wire coat hanger and bent it into a snake capturing device.  Rob was ready with gloves (Helo was really agitated at this point) and we fished him out of there, luckily without any obvious injury from his adventures in the disposal.  

And you can bet the first thing I did this morning was google "snake proof cage."