How do you get a six (or eight, depending on who you asked) foot snake out of the cab of a ten-wheel grain truck? If you ask most people they will tell you, "Don't let him in there to start with." Well, that is all well and good but what do you do when the little thief sneaks in anyway? Let me tell you it isn't an easy job. Three days, two men, me, three kids, three dogs, and a partridge in a pear tree and that silly snake was STILL in the cab of the grain truck. So what did we try you ask? Well that is a story in and of itself.
First things first. The discovery of the miscreant snake. My husband, Cody, decided he needed to get the ten-wheeler ready for the upcoming wheat harvest and so he climbed in the cab of the truck and relocated the truck, where it has been sitting for about 6 months, to a closer spot near the workshop.
While moving the truck he realized that he was not alone in the cab. He looked down when he caught something out of the corner of his eye and saw a coiled up black snake looking at him. Extremely unnerving, especially when you are not expecting it. He was able to keep himself composed long enough to move the truck and come to a complete stop before he quickly exited the cab.
Now you would think that being disturbed by not only a human being and movement from the large home you have been living in that, as a snake, you would vacate said premises and be long gone before someone took a gun or a hoe to your self. Not this snake. He had decided that he was taking up residence in the cab of my husband's truck and was not going to be removed. Cody assumed, like we all did, that he would remove himself as soon as the truck stopped but when he went back to get into the cab a little while later he realized the snake was still hanging out, taking it easy in the cab. So Cody along with his brother decided to try several things to remove the snake from the truck.
The first thing they tried was to leave the doors open on the cab and let the snake take his time overnight and slither itself out of the cab. So we all waited with bated breath, I can assure you, waiting to see if the snake had removed itself from the truck. Unfortunately he had not used his perfect opportunity to remove himself and had in fact buried himself behind the gas tank that sits right behind the cab's only bench seat. So we spent the better half of a morning try to come up with a better way in which to either entice the snake to come out so that we could grab it and remove it by force. We were only, once, able to get close enough to grab its tail and the snake was either so long and wrapped itself around something or was so strong that it held itself up that my brother-in-law (who by the way is extremely scared of snakes) was unable to get the snake to even budge an inch. By the time he let it go, the snake had crawled itself further up into the metal of the cab where he could no longer be grabbed at all.
The next thing we tried was to take a garden hose to the cab of the truck and try to wash the silly thing out or freeze it out with the cold well water that was spilling out of the hose. Let me tell you we had about 50 gallons of water that was sprayed and then washed out of the cab of the ten-wheeler with absolutely no luck. So we were back to square one.
Then my husband decided to remove the seat and the gas tank from inside of the cab of the truck so that he would have better access to the snake. With that tough job completed Cody realized that the snake had evidently been living in the seat of the truck for awhile because there was a perfect holed out maze that went through the entire seat! But still no snake removed from the truck. He could still hear the snake coiling and uncoiling and slithering through the back of the cab where he could not been seen or reached.
So now what? That was the next question so we did what anyone does about a problem they can't figure out they call whomever they know that might know something to try and then you look on the internet.
So I called my Mom because she grew up on a farm and had her fair share of encounters with snakes and I thought she might have some good ideas. She suggested that we bait the silly snake with a hot dog or two laced with some rat poison so that if we couldn't grab the silly thing when it came out to grab the hot dog the rat poison would surely do the trick right?! Well it was a great idea in theory only we learned later from our search on the internet that snakes will not rise to any type of bait that is not alive!
Well darn. OK, so we wanted to know what the all knowing internet could tell us about getting rid of our friendly neighborhood black snake. The advice we could find was that we should not allow the snake to get into places we did not want them. Well good grief we knew that so that was a big waste of time. Now what do we do?
Well we did what we thought we had to. Cody taped up all the holes in the metal and taped the windows closed with a hose that we attached to the tail pipe of our Ford F-150 and turned on our truck and tried to smoke the snake out. Cody left the hose attached for over an hour and filled the cab of the ten-wheeler with carbon monoxide. We left the cab taped up over night and in the morning went to check to see if had accomplished the task of smoking the snake out. Well, shucks, no such luck. The silly thing could still be heard slithering around inside the cab behind the metal that made up the back wall of the cab.
So Cody decided to give up and let the silly thing have his way with the truck and so he worked for the next hour or two to put the seat and gas tank back in the truck. When that was done he went to move the truck back to the place where he had had it previously sitting only to discover that the truck had some mechanical issues and was forced to leave it sitting where it was until he could get it fixed.
The next morning (the third morning of the fun snake saga) Cody came out to find that the snake had shed his skin and vacated the premises FINALLY! I suppose the snake just needed somewhere he could finish his molting process and when he was done he went to find something to eat. I would be hungry too if I had been almost drowned, had my tail pulled on and then almost suffocated from carbon monoxide.
So the moral to this story is what everyone told us in the beginning "Don't let snakes in to start with!" Much easier said than done but you have to try I suppose!
First things first. The discovery of the miscreant snake. My husband, Cody, decided he needed to get the ten-wheeler ready for the upcoming wheat harvest and so he climbed in the cab of the truck and relocated the truck, where it has been sitting for about 6 months, to a closer spot near the workshop.
While moving the truck he realized that he was not alone in the cab. He looked down when he caught something out of the corner of his eye and saw a coiled up black snake looking at him. Extremely unnerving, especially when you are not expecting it. He was able to keep himself composed long enough to move the truck and come to a complete stop before he quickly exited the cab.
Now you would think that being disturbed by not only a human being and movement from the large home you have been living in that, as a snake, you would vacate said premises and be long gone before someone took a gun or a hoe to your self. Not this snake. He had decided that he was taking up residence in the cab of my husband's truck and was not going to be removed. Cody assumed, like we all did, that he would remove himself as soon as the truck stopped but when he went back to get into the cab a little while later he realized the snake was still hanging out, taking it easy in the cab. So Cody along with his brother decided to try several things to remove the snake from the truck.
The first thing they tried was to leave the doors open on the cab and let the snake take his time overnight and slither itself out of the cab. So we all waited with bated breath, I can assure you, waiting to see if the snake had removed itself from the truck. Unfortunately he had not used his perfect opportunity to remove himself and had in fact buried himself behind the gas tank that sits right behind the cab's only bench seat. So we spent the better half of a morning try to come up with a better way in which to either entice the snake to come out so that we could grab it and remove it by force. We were only, once, able to get close enough to grab its tail and the snake was either so long and wrapped itself around something or was so strong that it held itself up that my brother-in-law (who by the way is extremely scared of snakes) was unable to get the snake to even budge an inch. By the time he let it go, the snake had crawled itself further up into the metal of the cab where he could no longer be grabbed at all.
The next thing we tried was to take a garden hose to the cab of the truck and try to wash the silly thing out or freeze it out with the cold well water that was spilling out of the hose. Let me tell you we had about 50 gallons of water that was sprayed and then washed out of the cab of the ten-wheeler with absolutely no luck. So we were back to square one.
Then my husband decided to remove the seat and the gas tank from inside of the cab of the truck so that he would have better access to the snake. With that tough job completed Cody realized that the snake had evidently been living in the seat of the truck for awhile because there was a perfect holed out maze that went through the entire seat! But still no snake removed from the truck. He could still hear the snake coiling and uncoiling and slithering through the back of the cab where he could not been seen or reached.
So now what? That was the next question so we did what anyone does about a problem they can't figure out they call whomever they know that might know something to try and then you look on the internet.
So I called my Mom because she grew up on a farm and had her fair share of encounters with snakes and I thought she might have some good ideas. She suggested that we bait the silly snake with a hot dog or two laced with some rat poison so that if we couldn't grab the silly thing when it came out to grab the hot dog the rat poison would surely do the trick right?! Well it was a great idea in theory only we learned later from our search on the internet that snakes will not rise to any type of bait that is not alive!
Well darn. OK, so we wanted to know what the all knowing internet could tell us about getting rid of our friendly neighborhood black snake. The advice we could find was that we should not allow the snake to get into places we did not want them. Well good grief we knew that so that was a big waste of time. Now what do we do?
Well we did what we thought we had to. Cody taped up all the holes in the metal and taped the windows closed with a hose that we attached to the tail pipe of our Ford F-150 and turned on our truck and tried to smoke the snake out. Cody left the hose attached for over an hour and filled the cab of the ten-wheeler with carbon monoxide. We left the cab taped up over night and in the morning went to check to see if had accomplished the task of smoking the snake out. Well, shucks, no such luck. The silly thing could still be heard slithering around inside the cab behind the metal that made up the back wall of the cab.
So Cody decided to give up and let the silly thing have his way with the truck and so he worked for the next hour or two to put the seat and gas tank back in the truck. When that was done he went to move the truck back to the place where he had had it previously sitting only to discover that the truck had some mechanical issues and was forced to leave it sitting where it was until he could get it fixed.
The next morning (the third morning of the fun snake saga) Cody came out to find that the snake had shed his skin and vacated the premises FINALLY! I suppose the snake just needed somewhere he could finish his molting process and when he was done he went to find something to eat. I would be hungry too if I had been almost drowned, had my tail pulled on and then almost suffocated from carbon monoxide.
So the moral to this story is what everyone told us in the beginning "Don't let snakes in to start with!" Much easier said than done but you have to try I suppose!
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