Freddy and the Snake

I was standing there peeing and whistling softly to myself and thinking about my daughter, Lee-Lee, when I heard, “Hey Fred...” I turned because my name was “Fred” and because I was peeing in my own back-yard thinking I was by myself. I wasn't expecting anyone, I wouldn't have jerked around like I did had I been expecting someone. I pissed on my cufflinks and my sleeve and I think I splattered my brand new shoes.

“Frightfully sorry! It's me! Lenny!” came the voice.

I looked around both my shoulders. I was alarmed, to say the least. I found myself raising my head and there over the fence straight above me in the midnight sky I slowly recognized the unmistakable sad truth. I was looking up at two blinking eyeballs peering down at me.

“Hey, Lenny,” I said. My quick wit was at a loss of more to say. If he had not told me his name I wouldn't have known it. He lived next door alone. I rarely saw him, and knew only that he owned exotic pets. I had read a write-up about him a year or so ago. Iguanas or snakes or something. I allowed the final pitiful squirt of urine to splatter to the ground at my feet. I felt much better the second it landed.

“I don't mean to alarm you,” my neighbor said.

No,” I said, “No! No! What's up? How ya doing?” I found myself standing on my toes turning away as I shook. My wife was upstairs undressing after our daughter's wedding. Lee-Lee, my one and only, was on her honeymoon. I was dressed in shiny black shoes wearing tux and tails. I had never seen nor spoken to this man before and I had hopes that I never would again. My Lee-Lee was on her honeymoon!

He said in a whisper, ”Do not move. There is a nine foot Burmese python in the tree above your head...”

I heard the words but the meaning just wouldn't come. There is a nine foot Burmese python in the tree over my head? That was what he said. I had no idea what he was talking about.

I was looking up to the top of the fence where I could see my neighbor's bald head, and could see his ears that seemed to take up the rest of the night sky. He had bushy eyebrows that caught the moonlight and nestled in a tight knot between his shiny eyes. He looked deadly serious.

He said again, this time in a kind of growl, “There is a nine foot long Burmese python dangling above your head in that tree!”

“What, this tree,” I said jabbing my thumb over my shoulder. This guy was not making a lot of sense.

Suddenly an up-stairs bedroom window opened. “Freddy, are you coming to bed?” My wife asked. She added “Darling...?” as kind of an after-thought and then closed the window with enough conviction to be a message all its own.

It was then I felt the slither against my ear. It felt like a dry electrical current buzzing about my neck. I recognized the sensation instantly as something that could only be a tongue belonging to none other that a nine foot long Burmese python that was dangling above my head. You know it when you feel it. The nine foot long Burmese python's tongue was now skimming my right ear as I became painfully aware of a very calm man with a very calm voice telling me calmly from high above over the fence, “Do not move... For the love of Jesus... Do...Not...Move...”

Then I saw the snake's front half . His head and a good deal more came past my ear and circled majestically out in front of my face. The snake was a golden yellow in the moon's light and reminded me of a yellow shark, sleek and smooth and deadly.

Somehow during all this I became aware of the fact that I still had my penis gripped in my hand. I came to the conclusion that I didn't want to die like this. I didn't. I really didn't! I thought about Lee-Lee going off with that moron to Tampa Bay. I thought briefly about how this would look, me and the snake and my penis and everything.

The bedroom window opened again. “Fred, do you have no feelings?”

“Easy easy easy...” the man was saying. He well may have been hyper-ventilating. His words were coming out in great puffing air.

The snake began making a U-turn from out in front of me to a slow lazy arc back toward me again. His beady black eyes and his tongue were getting closer to my face the longer I stood there. The tongue seemed more alive than the eyes as it was slithering, inching, waving toward my face.

“Freddy...are you planning on ever bringing your ass to bed, sweat'ems?”

“Do not, I repeat, do Not move,” Lenny said in a whispered squeak. He sounded like all the air had seeped out of his lungs.

Now I must say that I have heard a lot of bad advice in my time, but this was the worst ever. “Lenny,” I said, “ You must be out of your happy-assed mind!” And I ducked under that nine foot Bernese python like it was standing still and I was racing across the lawn with my manhood still clenched in my right hand and my tuxedo tails flapping in the wind behind me.

“You're a very lucky man,” I heard Lenny saying from somewhere in the darkness.

“Hey, Lenny!” I screamed toward the fence, “You take care of your snake, and I'll take care of mine!”

“Who are you talking to?” my wife asked in an icy voice from the second floor.

“Nobody, dumpling!” I told her, “I'm coming right up.”

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