Late but Yummy, and Snake Sitting

We ate dinner tonight at 9:30. Seriously.

I would feel a little bad, but it is Mark's fault. About 7:00 he got his shoes on and rode off on his bike with Oren riding his little one too. I had no idea where they went, but figured I may as well make those chicken pillows I talked about so I could post the recipe. Since I was sure they would be gone for quite a while, you know, why the heck not.

I was already feeling grumpy today, just a generally bad mood and such. So when I got yelled at for having dinner so late I did a little yelling of my own. Then I got told I should be taking a higher dose of those meds.... Lovely. Anyway, I made the pillows, they ate the pillows, the pillows were yummuy, and the recipe has been posted on my blog.

Why was I already kind of grumpy? Because Amanda is out of town, and I am looking after her house, her rats (one of which had 9 babies) her cat, her fish, her guinea pig and her plants. That is actually the easy part. I am also supposed to keep an eye on her 7 snakes. (That's right, she got rid of 2, so we are down from the 9 she had before) I didn't have to do anything but check their water and see if they messed in their cages. If they did I was supposed to call another of our "friends" to come clean it since I don't handle snakes thank you very much. So I checked them Saturday. The 5 foot male and the 9 foot male had messed. Yay. I called our friend, we'll call her K. Left her a message. She calls me back on Sunday afternoon that she can't come do it until Wednesday because she is sick that day and won't be coming to base until Wednesday. She doesn't want to make extra trips... So I told her to call Amanda and let her know her snakes would be sitting in their own pee and poop for 3 more days. See how she takes that news, you know? She called that night, but Amanda wasn't quick enough to her phone, and barely missed her. She called K back right away. K didn't answer. 2 seconds after calling Amanda and she didn't answer! So Amanda had no idea until I called her today to make sure somebody else had taken care of the snakes. Nope, she had no idea K didn't do it. Needless to say we were both pretty mad. She does this all the time though, flakes out. We just didn't know anyone else Amanda felt comfortable having in her home by themselves that knows how to handle snakes!

At this point I asked her to give me a crash course in snake handling over the phone. I couldn't just let them sit there in the mess until Wednesday, they could get really sick from the wet newspaper, and these things are expensive! Plus, they're living things, albeit reptiles, but they are someone's pets! She talked me through it, and I was able to do the little male with no problem. The big guy likes to escape, but he proved easy enough to shove back in. He needed a full cage change, so I had to move him from one side to another, like changing the sheets on a bed-ridden patient. They have an 11 foot female, who likes to hiss a lot, and she scares me. So of course she had messed since I had last checked. She has never struck, so I went ahead and started cleaning that. She did hiss a couple of times, but stayed relatively quiet. That's a good sign I gather. I will be taking over the snakes from K, we are both pretty upset at her, and I was requested to lock the door behind me so no one else has access to the house.

Amanda is funny though. She told me she was planning on bringing me back something nice from her vacation since I am housesitting all those pets and stuff for 2 weeks. She said that now that I am doing the snakes too, I get something REALLY nice. She asked what I wanted.... I told her chocolate and a puppy. :-) Mark would flip out, so it's a good thing she wouldn't actually bring one back for me.

I am proud of myself though. I had never handled a full size snake before. A baby hog-nose yes, but not a large snake. This isn't something I would do all the time, I won't be asking to hold their snake (well, maybe the baby 1 1/2 foot king snake), but now I know I can keep them clean and healthy until they get back.