A Domestic Python

Reminiscent of Mr. Scully’s ‘ South African Snakes’

It had been a hot day. The very leaves looked droopy in the garden, the cauliflowers a-wilt. Not even a birdnote trilled: and only the heat-loving insects gave a sound of joy. But they! — They gave all the suggestion of an active volcano or a frying-pan. Get out the hose!

I got it. Out of the glare, down in the cellar, it was dark and cool. I stumbled a bit among stray tool-handles in the semi-dusk; found the wheeled rack, and trundled it out; unrove the hose, and left it in a neat rattlesnake coil, with the brass nozzle low leveled across the upper line, glinting a venomous gleam. Then I passed the socket end in through a cellar-window, and went in and down to the laundry, to connect it with the faucet. In so doing, I disturbed Thomas.

Thomas had made a night of it, last night. Night is the time for mice, and the tall grass near the rock-pile rustled enticement to Thomas. Hours he sat by it, in tensest concentration; and all students know the fatigue of that. It calls for subsequent deep repose, quite undisturbed. So Thomas objected.

What made it noteworthy is the usual amiability of Thomas. Jet-black and handsome, twelve pounds or so of portliness, with a depth of fur the envy of many a miss, to hear his voice in protest of aught was a day’s remark. Yet he rose from his couchant pose, unbared, slowdy, each gleaming set of curved talons, and sheathed them slowly, — s-l-o-w-l-y, — as if reluctant to house them still unused, lifted his coalblack standard to a fuzzy perpendicular, and stalked sulkily out and to the cellar-stair, making low remarks to himself at each resting-place. Thomas was cross. Yes, Thomas was sulky.

Confronting him was the coil of hose. Thomas paused. It had not been there when he passed that way before. It required investigation. Was it animate or not? Thomas’s whiskers quivered as, his head raised and for the moment frozen, his eyes gleamed yellow topaz against the dark. No sound, no motion, no unknown scent. Relaxing, he strolled forward, sat up by the smooth, peaceful-looking coil, curled his tail around his toes and yawned deeply, soulfully, as he indifferently scanned its folds.

That second I turned on the water, quick and sharp — then off.

Through the dark tube shot the pressure, with the quiver of life in every coil; from it came a deadly hiss, menacing; and the sunlight flashed a gleam from the golden head on the topmost coil as it moved just the fraction of an inch — Take care!

And Thomas did. Full four feet, right up in air, he jumped; and when he landed, all four feet were running! No lost motion in ' getting set ’ for Thomas: no hay-tedder ever swiftlier kicked the grass than he! To the eye a broad, black streak lay forty feet along the grass when Thomas stopped, and eyesight overtook him and coiled it up. The grass flew as he stopped, whirled, crouched for instant action.

A moment, then, hand on faucet, I loosed it slightly and turned it off. Life quivered through the coils again for just a breath. The eyes of Thomas turned to coals. Slowly a paw reached forward and secured a hold. Slowly the other forepaw passed its mate and set. Inch by inch a black tiger in miniature shortened distance, yards, more, — then a black bolt of lightning cleared the rest, and twenty talons and the Lord knows how many lancet teeth dug and stabbed at the coil, close in behind that brazen, gleaming head! Dug, stabbed — then one tremendous backward spring to a safety zone, and a crouch, and Thomas was on guard for what came next!

But the coil quivered flutteringly, faltering, — under the gentle impulse from the laundry, — and then lay at rest. A moment of vital inquiry, the certainty that his serpentine foe would move no more, and the tail of Thomas rose in air, and with a lordly air of casualness he strolled to the corner of the house, gave one more look back over his shoulder to make sure — and passed beyond our ken.