CHAPTER SEVEN: HOW NOT TO FEED A SNAKE


Two days later...

"Where do you think you're going?"

Eve winced. *Damn, caught in the act!* She turned with a smile on her face. "Jeff! I-"

"Uh uh. Back to bed. Now!"

Sighing, Eve went back inside her hotel room. She waited until Jeff was inside and shut the door before she opened her mouth. "I was just going out to buy Houdini something to eat."

"You rest here. I'll go," Jeff replied. "What do you need?"

"I've got the phone number and address right here," Eve said, pulling a piece of paper from her purse and handing it to Jeff. "When you get there, just tell the cashier that you're there to pick up a full-size feeder rat." Eve reached into her purse for her wallet and missed the look of, well, UGH! was about the best word to describe the look on Jeff's face just then.

"A rat?" Jeff questioned Eve as he accepted a twenty dollar bill.

"Yep," Eve replied.

"Don't they have, like, tins of snake show or something?"

Eve raised an eyebrow slightly. She could have some fun with this, she realized, fighting not to show a smile. "Sorry, nope."

Jeff took his wallet from the front pocket of his jeans and gingerly stuffed the twenty in there, apparently imagining it as the rat he would soon exchange it for.

"So, are they going to give me a box to put it in or something?"

"They'll probably just put it in a bag for you."

"A bag? Won't it get loose?"

"Not if its dead."

"Dead? I'm going to a pet shop to buy a dead rat?"

"It won't be dead until after you get there."

"How...nice," Jeff said, making it sound like anything but. He put his wallet back in his pants.

"Yep. Makes it much easier to cut the thing up before its fed to the snake. You'll have to do that, though. If I do it, I might give my germs to Houdini."



Jeff looked sharply at Eve when he heard he'd have to cut up a dead rat. Eve could no longer contain herself and burst out laughing from the shocked look on Jeff's face.

"Don't worry, Jeff," Eve managed to say between giggles after she started to calm down. "You won't have to make rat chunks!" Then she was off again roaring with laughter.

Jeff moved with lightning speed over to Eve, scooped her up in his arms, and brought her over to the bed, dropped her, and started tickling her sides. He tortured her this way until he had her screaming and begging for mercy.

"I'll be back soon," Jeff said when he finally got up. He went to his room first to grab his baseball cap and sunglasses. He tied his hair up in an elastic band and hid it under the hat. Fans mobbing him while he was purchasing an expired rodent was not something Jeff Really wanted to happen. He cringed just imagining the headlines that would almost certainly follow.


When Jeff back to the hotel it was to find that Eve had fallen asleep. He didn't want to disturb her - sick people needed their rest, after all - so he decided to handle the snake-feeding himself. He sat cross-legged in front of Houdini's cage and set the paper bag down between himself and the cage.

Now, how to go about feeding the snake?

Jeff stared at the paper bag for at least a full minute, all the time thinking that he really didn't want to reach into it and take out the dead rat. Well, that part was easy to tackle once he'd thought of a plan - simply tear the bag open.

Now Jeff had to deal with a dead rat wrapped up in a couple of paper towels. Taking care that he only handled the edges of the paper towel, Jeff was soon staring at the unwrapped rat corpse. He actually had to touch that thing and put it in the cage with Houdini?

Wait! Eve had never said that he couldn't let Houdini out of his cage and get the rat himself. Well, she hadn't actually given him any instructions on feeding the snake. Jeff shrugged. There was no reason why he couldn't do it that way. He reached over to unlock the cage door and swing it open.

That's when Jeff discovered a very big problem with his brilliant plan. Houdini, smelling a nice juicy rat, struck swiftly at the moving object - Jeff's hand - and sunk his tiny sharp teeth into the flesh.

"OW! HOLYFUCKGODDAMNSONOFABITCHSHIT!"

Eve shot straight up in bed upon hearing Jeff yelling and swearing, managing somehow to make several swears sound like one long curse word. Seeing Houdini firmly attached to Jeff's hand and a dead rat on the floor on top of some paper towels and a torn brown paper bag, she wasn't sure if she should laugh or go try to help. The latter, she quickly decided. Jeff was trying to pry Houdini off his hand.

"Jeff, stop! Don't do that!" Eve struggled from beneath the covers and ran to Jeff's side. She forcefully moved his free hand away from Houdini's head.

"What the hell are you doing?" Jeff demanded to know. "This hurts! I want him off me now!" He tried to pull his hand free from Eve's grip but she held firm.

"Oh, will you quit being such a big baby? The same thing's happened to me several times and I know it doesn't hurt as badly as you make it seem."

Jeff stopped whining long enough to throw her a dirty look. "So what do you suggest I do?" he asked through clenched teeth.

"You'll have to wait for Houdini to let go."

"What?!"

"If you try to pry him off, it could break his teeth off-"

"So?" Jeff interrupted with a mulish expression.

"-in your skin and quite possibly give you one hell of an infection if the doc misses pulling so much as even one of those little suckers out."

Jeff wasn't pleased about things, but he allowed Eve to control the situation. True to her word, Houdini eventually let go of Jeff's hand, slowly disengaging his teeth.

Eve led Jeff into the bathroom, sat him on the toilet, and cleaned and bandaged the cut. She pressed a light kiss on the bandages. "See? All better."

Jeff watched silently as Eve turned away from him, tidied up around the sink, then washed her hands. "First rule of feeding snakes," Eve began, not looking directly at Jeff. "You always wash your hands before you handle the snake. If your hands smell like their food, they'll try to eat them."

Eve walked out of the bathroom to get Houdini, raising her voice so that Jeff could still hear her as she talked to him. "Try to avoid feeding them in their cage. It's very possible for their food to get contaminated by their own feces." She came back in carrying Houdini and placed him in the tub. Jeff eyed Eve's behind as she leaned over, his gaze shooting back to her face as she straightened. "They say its best to use a solid plastic basket to feed them in and cover it partially with a towel or small blanket. I've found that a bathtub works just as good. I just turn the light off and leave the door wide open to let a bit of light spill in from another room. Snakes are nocturnal and so prefer not to have too much light around when they're feeding."

Eve left the room again, turning off the light as she went. She came back in carrying a long set of tongs - which was gripping the dead rat by its tail - and what looked kind of like a cane for a midget, except that it was straight-handled and upside down. The first thing Eve did was to use the cane thingy to pin the snake several inches behind his head.

"I'm doing this," Eve said, returning to her snake-feeding lecture, "because Houdini often tries to lunge at his 'prey'. Because snakes have bad eye sight, he misses occasionally and grabs onto the tongs...or someone's hand." Eve put the rat in the tub and let Houdini go. "Now, the rest is up to him."