So apparently, our snake is still alive. And I have to deal with it.

NOTE: This is a continuation of last week’s article about the baby garter snake that my kids found in our backyard that they then decided to keep. In the house. And that I begrudgingly didn’t make a big deal about, because I don’t know how to take care of snakes, so I figured it would be dead soon anyway, IY”H. Especially since it was Erev Rosh Hashanah when they found it, and I had no time to figure things out until after Sukkot, when I could finally sit down and look up how to feed a snake with Parshas Bereishis fresh in my mind.

So the first thing I discovered about snakes, looking up how to feed it way after we first got it, is that if you don’t feed it, it won’t die. It will just wait for you to look up how to feed it. Apparently, snakes don’t die so easily. They stay alive just to spite you. They’re the best pets.

It turns out that snakes are only supposed to eat like once a week. You just kind of forget about them, and then once in a while, you’re like, “Oh, that’s right. We have a snake. Did we feed it this week?”

“I don’t remember. It was a long week.”

My son got this information from his friends, a large number of whom own some kind of reptile. They also told him that snakes prefer live food, so they can hunt and catch it on their own. So basically, we have to catch food, keep it alive, and then bring it to the snake and let it loose again so the snake could then catch it himself. It’s kind of like when you turn off a light and your 2-year-old says he wanted to do it, so you turn it back on and let him turn it off like he’s doing you a favor.

“See? I’m no trouble at all. I hunt my own food.”

So my son and his friends have been spending time every day at recess digging up earthworms, because science kids are not sports kids, and I assume the teacher has no idea he’s coming into class with a cup of worms. He keeps coming home with cups full of earthworms, which I have no idea how he’s bringing home on his bike, and after a few days of this, it occurred to me that I have no idea what to feed earthworms. We have a snake that’s eating once a week, so we have to keep his food alive until he gets around to eating it. This is becoming an ever-increasing cycle. I hope the worms don’t eat anything alive. I can’t figure out how to feed a third thing.

My wife said that we’re supposed to put the worms in the fridge so they think it’s winter and go to sleep, and then we don’t have to feed them. So I was like, “Why not do that with the snake?”

Meanwhile, my mother-in-law, who’s found plenty of snakes in her garden in her time (her time ended when she bought a bird), said that she would take her snakes out of their enclosure and put them on a piece of newspaper on the dining room table, and then put the food in front of them, either because if you want to make sure they’re eating, you need to watch them eat, or because apparently my mother-in-law feels that all food in her house has to be eaten at the dining room table. Though I don’t know if watching it eat is really something I want to do. It unhinges its jaw and eats everything in one bite. I yell at my kids when they do that.

And to me this whole thing is crazy anyway, because as far as I can tell, earthworms are snakes. So it’s basically a snake eating another snake. Why are we siding with the snake here over the worm? And it’s not even like there’s a major size difference. Most of the worms my son digs up are bigger than the snake. Should I be cutting the earthworms in half? That’s supposed to work, right?

(NOTE: It doesn’t.)

I’m also not putting the snake on my table. We could barely catch it that time my other son dropped it on the floor. So we’ve been using a fish bowl. And we have cage matches. We put them in the bowl together, and the earthworm takes one look at the snake—I think it’s a look; I can’t tell which side is its face—and it starts hightailing it up the side of the fishbowl. And the snake does not care at all. We keep moving the worm back to the snake, each time feeling bad for the poor worm, which by the way is bigger than the snake, and the snake could not be less interested. It’s wondering, “Why are we suddenly in a fish bowl? And what’s up with my new roommate?… Uch, stay on your side!”

Also, just because you eat something doesn’t mean you can beat it in a cage match. I eat cows, but if you put me and a cow in an enclosed space, I am not going to win.

So generally what happens is we stare into the bowl for a while, yelling at the snake, until we get bored, and then we dump it back in its enclosure along with the worm. We have no idea whether the snake ends up eating it. We do this like 3 times a week. We keep putting new earthworms in the enclosure with it, and they keep disappearing under the dirt in there. So at this point, I have no idea how many earthworms are in there and how many should be in there. But if the snake hasn’t figured out that they’re food, he probably thinks he has an infestation.

My point is that if we wanted to casually starve our snake to death, it would take forever. It would take a full week for the snake to even notice. Plus it’s starting to hibernate now, because our house is not so warm in the winter. So this can go on forever.

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He also has six books out and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].