The Snake Charmer

VIII

A full day of driving and I felt incredibly stiff, along with several of the snakes in the car getting restless in the process from what I could tell. I kept the heating on low, to avoid the snakes from getting sick, but at the same time, Florida was so humid that it was anything, but cold. I had to stop a good couple of times for gas, and other times for food when needed, to poor Caspen's dismay. One thing I have definitely noticed is how much Caspen seems to hate me being more than a few feet away from him. I mean, just 2 feet away from him and he complained.

If I had thought that Clyde was clingy when it came to snakes sitting around my neck, that was an absolute understatement when now Clyde was coiled around my chest, holding me tightly. If he was a bra instead of an animal, I was sure he would hire himself for the job with how hard he squeezed me. Not to the point I fainted, but enough that you couldn't forget about him sitting there. Along with that, Caspen was coiled around my neck, like a choker, but for how long he was, his head would often lay down the front of my neck, surprising me every now and then if I felt his head touching my lips.

I often wanted to yell at him and ask what the heck he was doing, but at the same time I was surrounded by a whole bunch of other snakes in the car. I had to make sure that the car locked before I started to drive, due to finding some snakes getting a little too comfortable with the door handles or anything else they could manage to nudge themselves around, I still remembered points in the drive where I basically had a living seatbelt holding me down in the driver seat.

Pulling over at the peak of Florida, I was currently sitting on what some people called the handle, or the panhandle of Florida. I pulled up onto the far end of the Everglades reservoir, hoping not to find people nearby. I didn't want to end up having a bunch of people questioning me for why I had so many snakes out here. Sliding my seatbelt off of me, I looked out at all of the water and the tons of greenery that was around. I was already certain there could be snakes out here, with all the water out here, it wouldn't even be a surprise if I saw any water moccasins while we were at it. Or any river snakes.

I felt exhausted, but felt far from done with this journey. I sighed as I rested my head on top of the wheel, already feeling part of me wanting to turn my car around and drive right back home, but I knew that I had already come so far. I grabbed the car handle next to me and pushed the door open, but before I could step out, I immediately found a water moccasin sitting there staring right at me. Hissing vigorously as I looked down at it. From looking at it, based on the coloring, it was not a full grown adult, but it was still all the more terrifying as I looked at it. I know I would have seen it when parking, so why the heck was it all of a sudden staring at me.

The lemon colored tail shaking back and forth, just like a rattlesnake as it stared at me with its jaw showing off the famous white mouth that it was known for. Not wanting to step out of the car, nor shut the car door, I sat there until I heard the dangerous hissing of a snake next to my ear, but I didn't dare turn my head to look.

Caspen sat around my neck, hissing right back at the snake that sat below us, before I finally felt strong enough to set my foot down on the ground in front of the cottonmouth, to hear small hisses coming from it as the snake watched my every move. Sitting there half in, half out of the car, I smelled something underneath my nose, as I sat there. It smelled faint at first, but as I looked down at my neck, I saw that Caspen had grown in size and was slowly coiling around my chest as he looked down at the snake.

It felt quite awkward as he not only stared the snake down, but the way he held me stopped me from moving an inch, before Caspen released his strong hold, and sat there fully coiled around my chest, showing off the royal blue scales. Setting my other foot on the ground, I hopped out of the car, before walking over to the back door and opening it up to let the snakes hop out and slither around, certain they wanted to stretch their scales out from the long car ride.

The smell stunk at first, no matter how faint it was, but I slowly grew use to it, realizing that Caspen had been musking on me for some reason, but I decided not to think too much on it as I looked out at the swampy grounds surrounding us, along with the mangrove trees that sat around us.

"What now?" I asked, hoping Caspen would answer me as I knew not what to do or where he wanted me to go from here. I felt several snakes touch my feet, getting my attention as I looked down to see them slithering forward, away from the car toward the swampy water that surrounded us. There was no way I was just gonna just continue my journey through the murky water, leaving my shoes and clothes soaked, yet when something bit my ear I sighed realizing I definitely didn't have a choice in my case.

I looked down at Caspen who seemed to be studying me. "Can we not wait till like nightfall or something? I know you can't shift right here where eyes might catch you, but I don't want to walk through a bunch of water with my clothes and shoes getting wet."

I looked down seeing Caspen thinking it all over, before he slowly nodded and the snakes around me slithered off in random directions. Leaving me alone with Caspen sitting coiled up on my shoulders. I walked over to my car, and sat down on the passenger side instead of the driver side. Grabbing the box I brought with me last minute, I opened it up to reveal pictures and small objects

Inside I pulled out a few dog tags that had my mothers and fathers name on them, along with a photo of my parents before they had died in a plane crash. They had been coming back home from a small vacation that they were spending together. For some reason though, the plane instead of landing successfully as it should, it blew up, killing everyone on the plane and crashed into the sea.

I truly missed them, as I felt tears running down my face. Both my parents were the only child in their families, leaving me with no aunts or uncles to look up to. Though, I was alread 20 years old when they died. I had been working on my four-year degree in herpetology, about half way through it, as I heard the news. I loved snakes, for how beautiful their skins could be, along with how different snakes all differed in their types and personalities. Feeling a tear run down my face, I was startled out of my thoughts as I felt Caspen lick the tear off my face, before seeing him gently bite the tip of my nose. I smiled very briefly at him, before closing the small box back up. Setting it down as I turned to look at the time. It was 1 pm, meaning we still had several hours before it would start to get even a little bit dark.

I was exhausted from how much I had been driving, having very few stops, and no sleep along the way. I reached down and shifted the seat so that way it was more comfortable to sleep on, looking up at the ceiling of my car with the passenger door still wide open, in worry for my snakes that had wondered off. Feeling something touch my leg, I slowly sat up to find all of my snakes were slowly climbing back into the car right by my feet. Noticing Clyde, Jewel, and Shade slithering up my legs, I sighed as I slowly laid back down, feeling several snakes climbing up me to find Clyde coiling up on top of my chest, followed by several others. The large constrictors coiling around my arms or my legs, as some of my king snakes laid on my chest. Startled, I felt something slither up underneath me, startling me as I felt strong coils lift me off the seat, to find myself laying in Caspen's blue coils that wrapped around me and the rest of the snakes that also were within his coils. Caspen rested his large head right beside my own as I found myself using his coils as a pillow due to how he positioned himself around me.