We Hid a Copperhead

My family has always used humor to get through tough times. Almost twenty years ago, when I lived at my grandmother’s house, I kept quite a few reptiles and amphibians. Imagine that. I had a room designated for warmer-weather reptiles like bearded dragons and snakes. My bedroom, across the hall, stayed at a consistent seventy-three degrees year-round—perfect for tropical frogs.

I’ve always been fascinated with venomous snakes, and among my cold-blooded menagerie were a couple of copperheads and a baby dusky pygmy rattlesnake. One day, one of the venomous reptiles escaped, and my family swore a blood oath—or something like that—not to tell my grandmother. Well, at least not until she was on her deathbed. I’ll come back to that later. That’s where the humor comes in.

I kept the copperheads housed together in a fifty-five-gallon aquarium with bricks on top of the screen lid to weigh it down—like a responsible reptile keeper would. The copperheads were only temporary pets I had recently caught while driving home. I’ve had a dangerous habit most of my life of moving snakes off busy roads. I’m usually the guy people call to relocate copperheads from their property, and I’m always thankful when neither snakes nor humans are harmed. I was planning to relocate these two “nuisance” copperheads, but I never got the chance.

When I went into the bedroom to bag them up, something was off. Actually, something was missing.

As bad luck would have it, one of the copperheads was gone. He wasn’t under the mulch. He wasn’t hiding in the box. He was gone. To make matters worse, the missing one was the larger and more aggressive of the two. That eliminated my first thought of one snake consuming the other. Sure, it happens, but the smaller one couldn’t have possibly eaten a snake twice his size. I panicked. I really freaked out. My mind spun through every possible nightmare scenario.

I immediately carried the entire aquarium outside and dumped it in the front yard, hoping the snake was just buried under the substrate. I sifted through the mulch feverishly—no luck. The damn thing was nowhere. I ran the smaller copperhead across the street to a wooded lot and let it go. Then I tore back into the house and searched with the fury of life and death.

Copperhead venom doesn’t usually kill humans, but if my grandmother had been bitten, it wouldn’t have gone well for her. And the aftermath for me would have been even worse. My mom and uncles would have killed me. I’d already been warned against keeping venomous snakes, but I thought I knew what I was doing. At least that’s what I told myself in defiance of their wisdom. Way to prove them right, Stan.

I couldn’t tell Mawmaw. How could I? She’d have been terrified—and probably kicked me out. I don’t even know where she was while I was flipping over furniture like a Tasmanian devil. I just had to find the snake before she got home. That at least bought me time to come up with a plan in case I failed. I needed a lie—a good one.

The snake was nowhere. My mom and uncles were furious. I was disgusted with myself. Everyone kept calling and cussing me out, but we still didn’t tell Mawmaw. I even called my uncle to ask if he’d let the snake out as a prank. Through clenched teeth, he threatened to end me if I didn’t find it soon.

In desperation, I told my grandmother we had roaches. That wasn’t exactly a lie—we did. Some people politely called them palmetto bugs, but they were roaches, plain and simple. Old houses come with them, and the damp basement was prime real estate. It was an easy sell. I ran into town and nearly bought out the hardware store’s supply of bug bombs. I figured if roaches can’t survive them, neither could a copperhead.

This was one of the only times in my life I deliberately chose to kill a snake. In my mind, it was either him or me. I love snakes, but I loved my grandmother infinitely more.

We never found the snake. There was never a smell. I can’t even say for sure I killed it. The house wasn’t airtight, so it could have easily slipped outside. I did see a dead copperhead about a mile up the road soon after. I convinced myself it was that one. Still, the nightmares kept coming. I tiptoed to my light switch at night, praying I wouldn’t step on a venom-laden landmine. I imagined my grandmother reaching into her sock drawer only to pull out a viper.

So, we lied. All of us.

We didn’t tell Mawmaw until she was on her deathbed. She had barely breathed a word in a week when we got the call. As we circled her hospital bed, my mother leaned close and said, “Mom, I just wanted you to know Stan let a copperhead loose in your house, and we never told you. I always felt bad about that and had to get it off my chest.”

The room erupted in laughter. For a brief moment, grief gave way to belly laughs—much to the confusion of the hospital staff. I wasn’t a bad reptile keeper. I took precautions. But sometimes snakes be snaking. We were just grateful nothing bad ever happened.

That was the last time I ever kept venomous reptiles in the house. I promised myself then that I would never keep them longer than a night, and only if they were double-secured in two enclosures. I’ve kept that promise for the most part, except for occasional educational presentations. I’ll still relocate snakes when needed, but they rarely come inside my house.

I still love them, but I think they’re better behind a camera lens than under my bed—or wherever that escape artist ended up.

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Stan Lake is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker currently living in Bethania, North Carolina with his wife Jess and their house full of animals. He split his time growing up between chasing wildlife and screaming on stages in hardcore bands you’ve never heard of. He has been published by Dead Reckoning Collective, The Havok Journal, Reptiles Magazine, Lethal Minds Journal, and many others. He filmed and directed a documentary called “Hammer Down” about his 2005 deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in with Alpha Battery 5-113^th of the NC Army National Guard. You can find his books, collected works, and social media accounts at www.stanlakecreates.com

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.