Well, those days are over.
Because I happened to walk down my front walk today and suddenly, on the flagstone landing was something I had never seen before in my entire life—a massive moving ball of live snakes, writhing all over each other.
No, I wasn’t drinking.
But I am now.
I jumped back, screaming, and all of a sudden the snakes went in a million different directions, which was even scarier. I had no idea that snakes could move that fast, and they fled immediately for holes around the garden that I didn’t even know existed.
I ran into the house, and Francesca happened to be home, so I did what any respectable mother would do.
I fled into the arms of my daughter.
Francesca gave me a hug, listened to my story, then we grabbed her phone to make a video. We both went outside, where she was much braver than I, so she filmed the snakes breaking up their snake ball. She thought the entire episode was incredibly cool.
I did not.
Instead, I went online to try to understand what I had seen, because that’s the way things are nowadays, wherein we require electronic means to understand Nature.
All I had to do was Google “garter snake ball.”
Well, you guessed it.
The snakes were having a ball.
Literally.
This mass of mating snakes is called a “mating ball.”
Apparently I had witnessed the mating ritual of garter snakes, a sight that will turn your stomach or make you jealous, depending on how single a girl you are.
I’m not that single.
The bottom line is this time of year, a female snake will come out of hibernation and give off pheromones to attract male snakes. Dozens of male snakes will pick up the scent and attempt to mate with one female. One article said that a matting ball has “up to 25 males per female,” but another article said that the males mate with a single female “in droves.”
So Susan gets around.
I hate to slut-shame a snake, but still.
Sssssslut.
One article said that a single female will attract so many snakes that “homeowners sometimes think garter snakes are overrunning their neighborhoods.”
Great.
I am that homeowner.
But I don’t think the snakes are overrunning my neighborhood. I think they’re overrunning my garden.
But wait, it gets worse.
Garter snakes bear live young, and they give birth to seven to eighty-seven baby snakes.
WHAT?
I’m going to have eighty-seven snakes in my front yard? To add to the snake that I already have?
Not only that, but I researched further and found out that the gestational period for garter snakes is two to three months, so I’m looking forward to a ssssssssssummer of sssssssssnakes.
But then I read more, and it turns out that the female garter snakes are able to store sperm in their body and fertilize themselves at will.
This is good news for the female garter snake.
But bad news for me.
I’m looking forward to a rolling tide of baby garter snakes as long as Susan decides she likes kids.
I have no idea what to do about this.
My reaction got only so far as to write about it, so you can share my horror.
Because that’s what friends are for.
My only other thought was how fast can I get a sign at the curb: FOR SSSSSSSSSALE.
Going Where the Weather Suits My Clothes
Lisa
I have yoga pants, so sooner or later, it was bound to happen.
I went to a yoga class.
And I lived.
Barely.
It came about because my friend Nan had started going to yoga, then my friend Paula started going, then all of a sudden every other middle-aged woman I know, all of whom had yoga pants, started going to yoga.
Yoga pants are the gateway drug to actual yoga.
I don’t even remember why I got yoga pants in the first place.
I suspect it had something to do with the elastic waistband.
Anyway, everybody I know was raving about yoga, and I was feeling very achy and blobby after winter, so I decided to join Nan at her beginner class on Saturday morning.
I figured, how hard can it be?
I got dressed in my yoga pants, but then I realized I had no yoga shirt, or basically anything that fits close enough so that when you go upside down it will not reveal your elastic waistband.
Or your elastic waist.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I got to the class early because that’s how I am on the first day of school.
I felt vaguely nervous waiting for everyone in the woo-woo yoga studio, which had a lot of stuff for sale.
Maybe shopping was the warm-up.
Unfortunately, the only things they sold were crystals, worry beads, and gluten-and-dairy-free candy bars.
By which I mean, candy bars without the candy.
Also I don’t need beads to worry.
I can worry without accessories.
I’m a professional worrier.
It comes with the ovaries.
Evidently, new-age gifts don’t appeal to me, in my old age.
There was only one thing for sale that tempted me, and it was called Be Happy Mist. It was a small spray bottle of clear fluid that claimed to “restore peace, ease suffering, and clear negative emotions.”
The sign said, “Do you want to be happier?”
I thought it was a trick question.
It’s hard to imagine you could be any happier than wearing a pair of pants with no waistband.
It was also safe for “adults, children, pets, and plants.”
Which is quite something.
I don’t think it’s possible to restore peace among my pets.
And my plants come with negative emotions.
Because my garden is growing snakes.
So I didn’t buy anything while I waited for the teacher to arrive, but in time she did and so did Nan, and we introduced ourselves, went to a pretty room, and immediately started what is called the “practice.”
Unfortunately, I should have practiced for the practice.
The very first thing we did was lie down on a mat on our back, reach our hands over our heads, and try to curve our bodies into the shape of a C, to the right and to the left.
Which was impossible.
The most I got was a backslash.
I couldn’t make a C on either side, and at one point while I was trying, I actually fell down, which is incredible because I was already on the floor.
Ten minutes later, we had gone through an array of poses, or stretching exercises, and I couldn’t do any of them. I was sweating, burping, and cursing.
In my mind.
Profanity is unwelcome in a yoga studio.
Also farting.
I held it in.
Correction, them in.
Really, all that squeezing toned my butt.
Maybe that’s how yoga works?
My muscles wiggled if I tried to hold a position, and the instructor said you were supposed to time your breathing to the stretching, which was when I realized I was holding my breath, probably trying to pass out so they would call 911 and rescue me from class.
All the poses had names, like Downward Dog, which was named by someone who never met a dog, since all of mine are Upward Dogs.
And when we came to Happy Baby pose, I wanted to give up because I felt like such an Unhappy Baby.
But I stayed with it, and when class was over, I noticed my back had stopped hurting.