My sophomore year of college, my three roommates and I went in together on getting a pet. It must have been around thirty or forty bucks each that we each contributed to the tank and the items we thought we needed to keep the chosen animal: a snake.
I’m not sure what kind it was specifically, just that we named it Oscar and kept it in its tank on a table in the room which was meant to be a dining room.
In retrospect, I was not well suited to roommate living. Perhaps it’s a by-product of having grown up in a large (my American standards) family of five children or perhaps it’s just who I am, but I later on found that I preferred living by myself. In fact, I enjoy being alone.
Oscar also would have done better under different circumstances. So much better, that at some point, Oscar took off to be on his own. Was that Oscar 1 or Oscar 2? My memory betrays him. I’m getting ahead of myself.
At some point, a snake named Oscar grew large enough that he managed to push open the lid of his tank and slither out.
Where did he go? We had no idea. Even though he was strong enough to push open the lid, he was still quite a small snake. Although, who wants to find a snake, of any size, in their bed? Not me.
Fortunately, it wasn’t my bed where I found him, some time later. It was under the garbage can when I picked it up to empty it. I screamed. There he was curled up. “Pick him up!” my roommate screamed back at me. Nope. Wasn’t going to be me. This was one of many signs that I was not cracked up to be a keeper of snakes. We learned enough at that point to put a rock on the lid of the cage.
But now that I’m thinking about it, that must have been Oscar 2 because clearly he had gotten big enough to escape. Oscar 1 (only retroactively named such) didn’t make it to such a size.
Oscar 1 (and Oscar 2) ate baby mice, called pinkies, which we kept in our freezer. They only at maybe once or twice a week, but part of the appeal (to some of the denizens of our house anyway) of having a snake was watching it unhinge its jaw and then swallow the little pink rodents whole. It was something from a nature program right in our very own living room.
We kept a heated rock in his tank and it was on this rock where we’d let the frozen mice slowly defrost. The rock was also supposed to provide warmth for this cold blooded animal there in our rental house in frigid Wisconsin. Turns out: one heated surface is not enough for a snake. One day, one of us found in him in his tank, curling himself into an actual knot. We had no idea what to do. It seemed he was sick. Very, very sick. By morning, Oscar was done writhing. He was dead.
The pet store employee seemed to think that he wasn’t warm enough to properly digest his pinkie, which meant that it rotted inside him.
So maybe this question, to me, isn’t so much about what makes a good or bad pet, but what makes a good or a bad pet owner.
I wasn’t a good roommate and this made me a bad snake keeper. I was a go along to get along person, unwilling to say “no” to other people. More importantly, unable to say, “yes” to myself. I would have been much happier living by myself, but I hadn’t yet given myself the self awareness to know that at the time. I was also too worried about being the “weirdo” who lived by herself. And maybe I was also too worried about being the uncool one who said “no” to chipping in to buy a house snake. And then a second. And for that, I’m sorry, Oscar 1.
Rhena Writes 