the boa

Mom was studying at the University to be a teacher, and she spent time in a few elementary school classrooms, and always ended up being the one to take the animals home—during vacations or for the summer or forever. We kids did our unconscious best to kill the animal or animals before the next batch was due to arrive.

So we got this boa constrictor that came in a wooden box with regular window screen mesh stapled to it. The box was about the size of a 1970's microwave oven. We put in a tree branch and a melmite dish of water, and of course the bowl kept tipping. Mom bought a white mouse to feed the three-foot snake, and put them in the cage together.

It seems now like we must have had that snake for months, but it was probably only a few weeks as it slowly starved. We didn’t know when it had last eaten, and had no idea how to convince a reptile to strangle a rodent. Actually, we think the snake, sluggish from its year in captivity in the kindergarten classroom, had forgotten how to constrict—it seemed likely that its former classmates had mortally wounded most of its previous meals, enabling it to grow slow and stupid.

We worried more and more about the snake as the weeks dragged on. Mom tried to make it positive and exciting for us kids by scotch-taping updates on the status of their match to the front of the cage, as if she were Howard Cosell calling the Ali-Frazier fight: “In this corner, straight from the jungles of South America, in the camouflaged suit, is the killer from Brazil-a. In the opposite corner, in white, the local hero, Mouse Mulligan. Who will win the match, folks? The mouse is looking good, but the snake has that lean and hungry work.” I embellish, but you get the idea.

We found the mouse dead first, which was disappointing because it had not become a lump inside the snake. A few days later, the snake stopped moving. I was sad, but really, I think I gave up when the snake didn't eat the mouse within the first 24 hours. It's hard to form a positive bond with a being that hasn't the will to live.