Precious - A Genuine Heroine My sister Gloria wrote a few days ago about excitement at their place down in Green Valley south of Tucson. They had been watching a movie on TV and.......Well....... I'll let her tell it:
"Precious (the cat) came in from the Arizona room to join us and she began moving cautiously to our entertainment center that holds all our books and the t.v., etc. She has never paid much attention to it before, as far as climbing into any of the available spaces. There is some empty space with only a few books standing against one edge of the compartment on the bottom shelf. This is where the cat went. I thought, she must want to curl up in there and lay down. But, her body language said differently. She backed up a little and then went in again, head first. I thought that's not right, there's something wrong. I figured it might be a bug or spider that she found there, so I picked up a piece of newspaper, getting ready to whack whatever it was. I gently got hold of the cat and pulled her out, keeping hold of her because I saw that there was definitely something in there. IT WAS A SNAKE!!! It looked like a small one, not rattling, so I didn't think it was a rattler. I put the cat out and closed the door to the Arizona room so she wouldn't come back in. Bob, of course, didn't believe me at first. I called 911 and they connected me to the Green Valley Fire Department. They're our snake people. Then I shut all the doors - office, bedroom, bathroom and stuffed towels at the bottoms of the doors. I DID NOT WANT IT COMING OUT OF THAT BOOKCASE AND SLITHERING IT'S WAY INTO ANOTHER ROOM AND GETTING LOST IN OR BEHIND SOMETHING. Bob laughed at me, but I'm glad I did that. Those suckers can move when they want to! It took the fire department about 20 minutes to get here and all the while the snake, luckily, stayed put. It was a King snake, which is harmless. But, stretched out, when it started to move when the fireman tried to catch it with the snake tongs - it was at least 50 feet long! Well, at least 2 feet. A young one, small and thin, but it really was at least 2 feet long. I have no idea how it got in or how long it was here. It might have just come in today with the rain - somehow! Otherwise, I think the cat might have found it before.So, that's our excitement - hopefully we'll never experience that again. We've had them outside before and called for help, and some of those have been mean rattlers, but I've never had one in the house before. THANK GOODNESS FOR THE CAT!!!!!!!"
Here is my niece Donna's response:
Dear Precious, Thank you so much for being the brave cat that we all knew you were. Thank you for saving mom and Bob and putting your life on the line the way you did. You didn't know if that snake was deadly or not, but that didn't slow you down! You were ready to move at a moment's notice. You were ready to sacrifice life and limb to save your TV watching owners. It's good that someone around there is on the ball. If it ever doesn't work out for you down south, we have a place for you here. Snake free. My eternal gratitude, Donna
(Me:)I'm glad all we have here are the little harmless water snakes. But we grew up with rattle snakes, sidewinders, scorpions, vinegaroons, spiders and Gila monsters when we were little in Paradise Valley. And...OHHHH.... the huge water bugs (beetles) They were the ones I didn't like. They got worse as time went by. We didn't have so many of those in olden times. That was in the long ago days.
