WILLIAMSON DAILY NEWS (W Virginia) 18 August 08 Goodness snakes alive! (Charlotte Sanders)
An oldtime exclamation, “Sakes alive!” is rarely heard these days but at Cinderella, the warning these days is “Snakes alive!”
Just ask any of the central office staff of the Mingo County Board of Education about the situation at the board’s Cinderella complex and the advice is “Be on guard.”
The former Cinderella Grade School building and board of education annex are coupled together with an enclosed walkway that was built over the mountain stream that empties into Sycamore Creek. It has become a mecca for snakes.
Debbie Sheppard, executive secretary to the county superintendent of schools, can tell you first hand what it feels like to walk through a doorway and have a snake fall from the ceiling and graze the front of your body on its way to the floor.
Debbie is an old hand at dealing with the snakes and quickly reacted instead of fainting or having a heart attack that some of her co-workers said they would have suffered under similar circumstances.
“Pam, bring your hoe; there’s a snake here,” yelled Debbie down the hallway to the reception desk where Receptionist Pam Varney works and keeps her snake weapon – a garden hoe.
Pam ran with the hoe to the room next to the technology center where Debbie confronted the snake and handed the hoe to her. Debbie quickly wielded the hoe and “slew the dragon,” so to speak.
“The snake was 16 inches long and looked like a copperhead at first, but it turned out to be a ‘Rat snake,’ according to information found on the Internet,” said Debbie. She said the snake apparently fell out of the ceiling over the door frame.
When talking to her one day about board business and learning of the snake incident, I suggested that she carry an umbrella around when entering a room so that any gymnastic snakes could land on the umbrella instead of her.
This incident with the snake is not as rare as one might think. In fact, such incidents occur frequently and everyone working in the board of education complex is constantly on the lookout for snakes as they move around in performance of their duties.
Robert “Hank” Starr, director of facilities and maintenance for the county school system, said employees of the maintenance department have surrounded the buildings and outside area abutting the mountain stream with a snake preventive treatment, “Snakes Away.” But the slithering creatures merely shake their tails in disdain and remain undaunted by efforts to extinguish them.
Debbie said employees have seen snakes crawling through the hallway and some have been caught in a “gummy trap.” “We have seen blacksnakes come through the back door of the building and have even spotted a copperhead around the creek area.”
One day recently, Pam had five little blacksnakes invade her reception counter and they were dealt with as unwelcome guests.
Debbie said Margaret Lovett of Vinson Street had related that, years ago, her granddaughter was seated at a desk in a classroom when the old building was a grade school, and that a blacksnake fell from the ceiling, landing next to the desk.
Ms. Lovett’s granddaughter, Tomika Smothers, attended the Cinderella school in the late 1980s and does not remember any snake falling by her desk, but stated she had seen snakes fall from the school’s ceiling and also crawl around on the school playground.
The fortunate thing is that no reports have ever been made of anyone being bitten by a snake in the area of the school board complex.
This writer has never been a “scaredy-cat,” but a flashlight and a personal reconnaissance of the area where I park at the school board location are precautions taken when attending meetings there. I would hate to carry one of the snakes on the framework under my car and have it invade my home property. Gasoline costs too much these days for me to transport a snake here and there.
Goodness snakes alive!