Mom, can’t you SEE that?

Saturday I was having a good, productive day.  During the morning, I had cleaned out the washer (who knew varnish does NOT come out of clothes), and ran 6 loads of laundry.  On my last load, Melanie comes down into the basement to pass along some more dirty clothes, and she screams, “Holy shit, Mom.  What the hell is that?”  I look over behind our son’s weight bench, and there he is…..Asia our 14 foot burmese python.  What the hell was he doing in the main part of the basement?  His cage and room are supposed to be escape proof.  Since moving into this house, this is the first escape.  So I go into the snake room, and see that his cage is open about 6 inches, and there is shed everywhere.  I follow the shed into the corner beside the chimney base, and there is a hole about 3 inches tall.  Asia at his roundest is about 8 inches thick.  That damn snake crawled thru that hole and that’s how he got into the main part of the basement.  So I am a little freaked out since Asia weighs over 100 pounds and there is NO WAY I can put him back by myself (Joshua was at work and therefore useless to me in this situation).  So I call a friend who also has snakes and ask him to come over and help me.  I swear Asia heard me, because as soon as I got off the phone, he decided to “explore” more of the basement.  He was trying to get into the corner where Joshua keeps his tool boxes.  I was afraid he would stab himself on a tool or a nail or whatever, so I go back into the snake room and grab the hook.  It basically looks like and upsidedown cane and you use it to handle snakes.  So I am hooking him every 30 seconds to keep him from getting any further into the tool boxes.  This, of course pisses him off, so he starts to hiss at me.  Now, we have had Asia for over 4 years (we rescued him from an abusive home), and he has never bitten any of us.  But the way I saw it, there was a first time for everything.  So after what seemed like a half an hour (he got stuck by a train), Jim shows up and gallantly assists me in getting Asia back into his cage.  All the while, I am calling and texting Joshua about his escapee, and I am getting no response (which added to my general irritation).  So, all’s well in the Vadney reptile room.  The best we can guess is Asia used his nose to slide open the door, and in the process of freeing himself, he shed his skin.  Perfectly natural occurance (the shed, not the escape).  Now that we know the little bastard can open his cage, we put locking shims against the glass so he can’t do this again.  Just when I think I am ok about Joshua’s hobby, something like this reminds me that I have a husband who loves snakes.  Lucky me.  I was trying to upload a picture of Asia taken last year but I can’t seem to get it to work.  If anyone is interested in seeing it, I can email it to you.