TWO SNAKES SHOULD BE PLENTY

You could say we have a rather eccentric household, what with occasions like the white horse event, the instance of the flying frog, or any number of other accounts buried in these steadily lengthening chronicles that I don't really feel like searching for and linking to so as to emphasize my point beyond refutation, but I suppose now that I at least have two snakes out on the onions and potatoes, that should be enough. Actually the snakes are atop the nets, where unfortunately they're likely to surprise any neighbors or hikers who happen to be strolling by and see a long yellow snake with brown stripes and a long orange snake with black-and-white rings, but what can you do.

I believe these snakes are from somewhere in South America, though I can't swear to that, it didn't occur to me to remember what it said on the packaging since I didn't expect to be writing about the snakes here, but with gardening you never really know, do you. Anyway, monkeys can't read - yet - and South America means nothing to them, as far as I can tell.

I'd been on the lookout for a good rubber snake ever since I saw an article on British gardening that mentioned just dropping a realistic rubber serpent somewhere in your garden to keep cats away, and I thought whoa why not monkeys, they are terrified of snakes and I'll try anything that simple, especially if it terrifies monkeys. But you know how it is, the minute you start looking, there's not a rubber snake within a thousand miles.

As far as I could tell, there were no rubber snakes at all on this side of the Pacific, at least that cost pretty close to zero, my preferred price. Then a surprising number of years later, rubber snakewise, I found some good ones in a 100 yen store and bought them all, then Echo found some more in another store, and before we knew it we were up to our ankles in rubber snakes. When it rains it pours. And they work, too; at least they did the job on a lady acquaintance of ours, who wouldn't even come near our doorway again after she'd seen one of the twins in the living room playing with a long orange snake, even though we assured the gasping lady it was made of rubber. (For some reason the kids are non-terrified; in fact they love our rubber snakes like they were pets.)

So when the season came round the other day I put two of the snakes out. I only put out two because I can't find the others, I suspect the girls hid them here and there for our guests or wandering neighbors to find. Anyway, if the snakes work as well on the monkeys, two will be plenty.

Now if only I can stay awake until the monkeys come.