I Could'nt Help But Laugh....

[iCandiBallPythons]

Patrick White

Inwood, Man. — From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Last updated on Thursday, Sep. 17, 2009 04:02AM EDT


Think the Hollywood bomb Snakes on a Plane was creepy?

How about snakes on a toaster, snakes in a laundry hamper or snakes on a heating vent?

At Inwood Manor, a Manitoba Housing complex 80 kilometres north of Winnipeg, residents have been finding the reptiles in the strangest places this month.

“Yesterday I found one curled up in my clothes,” said 84-year-old Shirley Thiessen. “I said to him, ‘You don't pay rent' and picked him up and tossed him outside.”

But the cold-blooded free-loaders keep coming – in such droves that the local MLA, Conservative Ralph Eichler, raised the issue in the legislature Wednesday.

“What steps are being taken to get these snakes out of the seniors home and back to their natural habitat?” he demanded.

The province says it is actively working on snake-proofing the building, but it's an impossible battle.

The town of Inwood is located along one of the world's most active migration routes for red-sided garter snakes. For the month of September, the whole region becomes the reptilian version of Florida, as over 100,000 snakes slink through town, bound for cracks and fissures in the local limestone where they can burrow comfortably below the area's winter frost-line. Some head for two limestone quarries north of the Inwood. Others slide towards the nearby Narcisse Snake Pits, home to the world's largest concentration of garter snakes.

And every year, a few herpetological squatters take refuge with the 55-plus crowd at Inwood Manor, a no-pets-allowed building.

“You get used to them,” resident Jim Monkman said. “The other day one fell off the doorframe and landed on my shoulder.”

Snakes on a shoulder?

“Yeah, it was a bit like a pirate with a parrot,” he said. “I just walked outside with it on my shoulder and brushed it off into the grass.”

As a courtesy to residents who scare easily, Mr. Monkman wakes up early every morning to scour the complex's hallways. “I don't kill them,” he said. “I just toss them outside.”

Mabel Anderson, a 73-year-old mother of 10 and grandmother of 40, isn't so sensitive.

“I kill 20 or 30 a day,” she said.

Asked her preferred extermination method, Ms. Anderson lifted one of her sequined slippers and stomped it to the ground. “Can you believe I stepped right on its head?” she says, pointing to a snake carcass lying in the grass just outside the front door.

The crawlers actually congregate outside the door, darting inside when someone opens it.

“If you're holding a bag of groceries or something, you can't close it fast enough,” said Ann O'Malley.

Once they're inside, Ms. Anderson takes no mercy. Inside her apartment, she pulls out her weapons of choice, a hammer and a pointy knife sharpener.

Well, used to be pointy.

“I broke [the tip] killing snakes,” she said. “After I kill ‘em, I put them in Javex. You never know what they have on them…And they smell.”

Snakes can carry salmonella and experts say residents should sanitize any surface the serpents touch.

There is no law against slaughtering the snakes, but “we don't recommend killing them,” said Dave Roberts, a snake expert with Manitoba Conservation. “The best method to get rid of them is either to eliminate the holes where they're crawling in or put up a snake fence around the property.”

Inwood Manor recently erected a small fence, but the problem persisted. The province has surveyed the property and found a stream of snakes burrowing towards the septic tank and working their away along the sewer pipe into the building's basement.

“We're in the process of hiring a contractor to close all the gaps in the structure,” said Joy Cramer, assistant deputy minister for Manitoba Housing.

At least one resident hopes the project isn't too successful.

“They're just snakes,” said Ms. Thiessen. “Besides, you never see any mice or rats around here. You get rid of the snakes and some other pest will move in. Leave 'em be.”

credits: The Globe And Mail National News

[Aleria]

Haha, gotta love the sense of humor from the 84 year old woman.

“I said to him, ‘You don't pay rent' and picked him up and tossed him outside.”

And her common sense.

“Besides, you never see any mice or rats around here. You get rid of the snakes and some other pest will move in. Leave 'em be.”