THE HERALD (Rock Hill, South Carolina) 26 November 08 Snake shakes out in the wash for York County family (Andrew Dys)
Like all overworked mothers/wives -- which is all of them -- Denise Cubbedge thought a clothes dryer screeching like a stuck pig might give her a welcome break from her kids' endless ketchup-covered shirts and her husband's dirty socks.
She didn't expect the dryer to hiss at her, though.
Denise and Barry Cubbedge and their sons, ages 4 and 1, live in the Miller Pond subdivision, near where the new Wal-Mart is going up off S.C. 274. On a day that was frigid and turned brutal overnight, Denise did laundry. She left one load in the dryer.
"I'm not one who takes the clothes out immediately," Denise courageously said.
Fair enough, Denise, I have often left mountains of dishes for somebody else to wash.
On Saturday, Denise tried to turn on the dryer and it wouldn't spin. The sound was a car wreck. Barry, like all great husbands on a Saturday, used one of the kids' birthday parties that day, with the in-laws coming, as a legitimate excuse not to handle fixing the dryer immediately.
By Sunday night, after a late church service, the dryer had to get looked at because it was still not spinning, and Denise could hold out no longer on laundry as the dirty socks piled up. Barry, wearing the husband's official Sunday night uniform of bare feet, boxer shorts and T-shirt, pulled out the washer and dryer. The kids were wandering around nearby. He took the back off the dryer and dropped the back like it was on fire.
"A snake!" Barry screamed.
Barry didn't have time for the screws needed to get that back tacked on, so he yelled out what men yell in times of need: "Duct tape!"
Denise came running with the tape, tearing off strips with her teeth. Barry yelped that he wanted 4-inch strips cut straight with scissors, and Denise said, "There is a snake next to our sons, take what you get!"
Cold war declared
Barry taped the back on the dryer as Denise fled upstairs with the kids.
"Now I had to figure out what to do with this big snake in the dryer," Barry said.
His first act was to pull on cowboy boots.
Then he pulled out the dryer farther, dragged it across the kitchen, down the little stairs, to the garage.
"Figured let him get cold, I'd plan what to do next," recalled Barry, who is not a hunter by any stretch. "We live near woods. I've had to kill a few blacksnakes. But this was no blacksnake."
About 20 minutes later, Barry found his courage. He untaped the back and shook the dryer until the snake fell out. Coiled in a ball, as big around as "a Red Bull can." Barry's first thought was "copperhead," second thought was "poisonous," third thought was "angry wife."
"I don't know how long he was -- I would guess 4 feet or more -- because I never opened him up full length," Barry said.
Now the problem was what to do with this snake. Barry did what husbands always do first: He grabbed a flat shovel.
"Better to get good contact," he said.
And then the snake, in the immortal words about Luca Brasi in "The Godfather" and used again by Denise Cubbedge, "went to sleep with the fishes."
Barry Cubbedge buried the snake the next day and Denise called York County Animal Control.
"I felt real bad about the snake," Barry said. "I didn't just kill the snake. I whacked him."
It's not clear exactly what kind of snake this was; Barry didn't have it inspected before he buried it.
But, he said, it appeared to be a python or boa constrictor. Like Yankees or liberals, not from "'round here."
Pythons are constrictors and can suffocate man and beast.
But how did the snake get in the dryer? The dryer is on the first floor. A grate covers the vent leading outside, but Barry found that grate was off. A-ha! The snake must have come in through the vent seeking that hot dryer.
"No doubt the snake was trying to get warm," said Roger Bradley, so many years with animal control that he's handled many snake calls.
The snake was undoubtedly somebody's pet that had gotten loose or was let loose because it got too big, Bradley said. Bad idea, letting pythons loose.
Animal Control will extricate a snake if one is found in somebody's living quarters, Bradley said, and the best action is to call officers while the snake is still living to make sure nobody gets hurt. Yet, Bradley said he understands that dispatching the snake was done for safety concerns.
The worst part of the story?
"Barry put the dryer back," Denise said. "I had to do laundry again."
Snake shakes out in the wash