![patrick from whack the creeps x reader patrick from whack the creeps x reader](https://img.yumpu.com/6936343/1/500x640/standouts-the-beat-within.jpg)
![patrick from whack the creeps x reader patrick from whack the creeps x reader](https://64.media.tumblr.com/e1bcdd4ef0f8428ed1a18bcf4b94ae6f/tumblr_pjy91vEjT21t8n6zyo6_500.jpg)
She took it out and it slowly encircled her arm. When she took the cover off the shoebox, there was a very small boa constrictor. She placed it on the counter, as I brought the mail to her, and asked me if I wanted to see her new shoes. A resident came in off the street, holding a shoebox. It was in 1962 and I, a student at City College in New York, was working evenings in the mailroom off the lobby of a residential hotel in Greenwich Village. I even once allowed a snake to wrap itself around my arm. I am, however, fascinated by snakes and, if I know in advance that I will see one, in the wild or in captivity, I won’t miss the chance.Īs a child, my fear of snakes was sometimes enough to keep my out of the woods, but gradually as I matured, I’ve overcome this (though some who know me will point out that they are still waiting for me to “mature”). It’s just the way they move, something in their slithering motion that yanks a particular nerve in my spinal column and makes me jump in a way that nothing else does. I don’t know – it’s not that I fear they will attack or bite me. Always have, especially the harmless ones, like garter snakes and water snakes. If you are still reading this, you must be asking why I made the choice to make my first snake kill in my 75 years on Earth. He (I’m assuming it was a “he”) made no sound as he fell into the water and, after a second or two of writhing, he sank. At the last moment, the snake began to flee, so the hoe cut him just about in half. I raised the hoe above my head and brought it down suddenly, hoping to chop its head off and kill it instantly. I was afraid (also maybe just a little hopeful) that the slight rocking my presence caused would alert the snake before I came in range, but there was a good breeze blowing and the snake was used to slight movement of the water. I grabbed the hoe I had left there just in case and, relying on the snake’s poor eyesight, I crept slowly and quietly up the ramp and onto the dock. So one day, around noon, as I approached the pond on the 30-foot ramp that connects the land with the floating dock (our little pond is entirely surrounded by shrubbery that extends well out over the water), I could see the snake lying just where it had lain several times before. And years ago we moved a huge snapping turtle, one that had fretfully inhabited our children’s dreams, by lifting it into a large cooler and transporting it 7 miles to another pond.īut, believe me, I’d rather face the 3-inch jaws of a snapping turtle than the unnerving gyrations of a snake. We live in rough harmony with the beavers that keep damming the pond outflow by night after I’ve opened it up to allow water through by day. I’m not a total faunanthropist when it comes to wildlife on our pond. It was a territorial dispute, and I decided I was going to do whatever it took to be King of the Dock. Its fate was decided by returning to sun itself on the dock at our pond, right at the point where the ladder dips into the water to allow swimmers to climb out onto the floating dock. My wife (who has no such phobia) told me after I had tried to discourage its presence by giving the snake a gentle whack with a long stick, “Either make peace with it or kill it, but don’t make it suffer.” Pretty in its own way, and harmless, it posed no threat other than a psychological one, and immediately I felt bad about it. It was a species known as the Northern water snake, black with subtle red bands, fairly widespread and not endangered.