The Marvelous Escape and Subsequent Capture of Houdini, the California King

(Warning: This hub may be controversial, especially to vegans, members of PITA, and other lovers of small, furry animals. This is not a how-to for those looking to own/feed a kingsnake [for one of those, see links at bottom of hub]. I admit we probably aren't the best owners... just doing the best we can.)

Years ago, I married a man with whom I had little in common. Much of the surface of his body (fortunately not his face) are covered in tattoos. He loves loud punk music. He’s a right-wing conservative. Before we met, he’d never recycled a piece of paper in his life. He’d certainly never seen a cloth diaper.

And he had this pet snake.

For the first few years of our marriage, I only saw the white and black striped snake when we went to visit my husband’s parents. I asked once why the snake’s cage was duct-taped shut with bricks weighing it down. “Well, his name is Houdini,” I was told. “He once escaped and was gone for weeks. Then one day, he descended from the frame of a doorway and scared Mom half to death.” Needless to say, precautions were taken to prevent another heart-stopping encounter with the California King.

When we moved from Texas to Portland, my dear husband decided that we should take Houdini with us. The kids were delighted. They loved to watch him eat furry little mice, loved to pet him when we would hold him, and loved to watch Daddy catch him when he slithered off in the grass in search of a life in the wild.

For the first few months, everything was fine. We got him a big tank with a lid that had a trap door through which we could drop his dinner once every few weeks. The kids would watch him chase his hopper-sized entree around his aquarium and finally trap it in his jaws and coil himself tightly around it till its eyes bulged, the feet stopped twitching, and one last breath escaped. It was like having Animal Planet right in our dining room. My kids were learning about nature the way it is.

And then one day in September of 2009, Houdini, who had been training the muscles of his defined reptile body for months, reached up to the top of his tank, pushed the lid up just high enough so he could slither into the crevice between lid and rim, and pulled the rest of his body through to freedom. He slithered across the dining room floor, into the corner of the kitchen where the door to the garage had been left open, and escaped into the crawl space under our house through a small opening in the wall (through which we had previously lost countless socks to Princess’s curiosity).

His escape was so quick, we thought maybe he was still in the house. We felt for him under the refrigerator, where he had hidden once or twice before. Perhaps he was in the couch looking for the mouse that had once slept in the cushions of its hide-a-bed. Or maybe he’d found warmth under the oven, still cooling from baking that night’s dinner.

But alas, Houdini was nowhere to be found. We thought we would never see him again.

Months passed. The weather was cold, but not terribly icy. Laying in bed at night, we would hear scampering in the walls and crawlspaces sometimes and joke that it was Houdini, chasing mice for dinner. But after a while, there was no use waiting for Houdini to come back. I quietly cleaned Houdini’s terrarium and stored it away in the garage.

One morning in early May, the birds were acting weird near a corner of the house where a certain large rhododendron bush hugged the gutter. That afternoon, the fat neighborhood cat, who never climbed anything, was up in the high branches of the rhody, quietly preparing to pounce… something. And then we saw it. Houdini’s signature black and white stripes slithered through the upper branches of the bush, toward a nest of spring eggs.

He didn’t want to be caught. My dear husband endured a few nicks and much hissing during his pursuit to capture our lost pet. In his time in the wild, Houdini had grown quite fierce and, well, wild. Back in his tank, he hissed and lurched at his own reflection, territorial of his home. We tried to turn him on to frozen mice, thinking it might aid his transition back to domesticity. But though we tried every method in the book (as much as I could stand, anyway), Houdini refused to scavenge.

Since his return, Houdini has never been the same. He’ll forever dream of those months under the house and in its walls and crawl spaces, hunting mice, taunting squirrels. I sometimes catch him frozen in position, his mouth half-open, his body rigid, as if ready to pounce on an unsuspecting prey. Though I’ve “pimped” his tank with a heating pad, heat lamp (for sunning), rock cave (for hiding), drift wood (for shedding), water hole (for drinking and moisturizing), and enough aspen flakes to make a network of burrowing tunnels, his domestic home is nothing compared to the wild life he once enjoyed.

But when we feed him, all three little ones gathered at the side of his tank, cheering Houdini on, he devours his prey without a moment’s hesitation. Ladybug often throws him leftovers from her tray (as if he would stoop to the level of omnivorous eating). We watch the muscles of his jaw undulate as he drinks in water from his bowl. We marvel as he sheds another layer of skin, yet can still coil himself completely inside his cave hide.

Sometimes we have staring contests, Houdini and I. I wait for him to turn away, bitter about his confinement. But he doesn’t. Somehow, he’s resigned himself to life in a tank, the pet of children too young to care for a larger mammalian creature who daily greet him and love him as best they can. When I can’t help but blink, I wonder if I’ve caught him in a nod, satisfied he’s won, happy with the simple but sweet life he leads.

* Animal Planet, a cable channel distributed by Discovery Communications, does not endorse the contents of this article. But they do show some pretty gruesome live (wild) feedings...