I love living in rural Southern California. I love the weather, I love the temperature. I love the small town I live in. I love seeing the menagerie of creatures in my yard, even the scary ones. There are rattle snakes, coyotes and mountain lions that have been seen regularly in the area. I have not had an encounter yet with the bigger more threatening creatures but I expect to at some point. For now I get plenty of benign furry and scampery animals on a regular basis.
Every morning I wake up to get the younger kids breakfast. They wake me up bright and early every day. If they sleep past 6 am, we are going to have a good day because everyone got a lot of sleep that night. It’s an ADHD/ASD thing for them. After they eat, I poke around the kitchen cleaning, filling bird feeders, feeding the dog, laundry load, etc. getting ready for the day.
This particular morning I started to notice a slight smell from under the kitchen sink. I had never smelled it before and had no idea what was causing it. I first thought maybe the garbage disposal was growing something funky or maybe there was a spill that was starting to ferment. I cleaned a little better and scrubbed hoping to eliminate the stink. The next day I smelled it a little more, so I cleaned more.
The following day it was still stronger and I started to worry. I kept cleaning and hoped I would find the source. I emptied out the cupboard under the kitchen sink thinking maybe the wood got wet and was decomposing, or maybe a mouse had died under that cabinet. By day 4 it was bad. The whole downstairs was permeated with the smell. I was ready to cut the bottom out from under the kitchen sink cupboard thinking that the dead thing was a reality and will never go away or the wood was rotting because there was evidence of a prior leak and it was painted over and sealed. It was awful. It was incredibly strong under the kitchen sink but also in the cabinet next to it and the ones above it. I opened windows and ran the house fan purging the air. I spent the entire day emptying out cupboards, disinfecting, moving everything away from the back kitchen wall. I cleaned everything, sniffing as I went making sure the source was not the thing I was cleaning. Everything was cleaned, every surface disinfected. It was immaculate. Then I smelled it coming from the outlet on the wall.
I must have made some kind of a cry or groan or some kind of a noise of disgust because at that point my husband and 15 yo son came into the kitchen. It had to have been bad to take them away from their video games. It was in the evening, so it was dusk outside. I had been cleaning all day, the windows were open because the inside smelled horrific. Fortunately it was still cool enough here in the day. My son went outside because he is an excellent problem solver and went to eliminate that from the scenario. He announced that he got a good whiff of it from the backyard. We went to bed still perplexed at the whole situation.
The next morning I started poking around outside more carefully after what my son had said. I was looking for evidence of a leak in that wall, or anything that might explain the noxious fumes in my kitchen. The sink pipes ran along that wall and there was a bathroom right above the kitchen. I was worried about a water leak or a sewer line leak. This sidewalk goes the length of the house in the back. Cement is like a sponge so I started looking for water evidence. I started sweeping the grass clippings and sticks that had collected on that sidewalk away from the house. I pulled on a stick that I thought the kids had stuck under the siding. I pulled on it and immediately realized that it wasn’t a stick. It was a dried, baked snake tail!
I knew that my well watered grass patch is an inviting place for small furry critters to frequent. I see rabbits, ground squirrels, western fence lizards and quail every day. Not to mention the dozen or more types of birds. I was very well aware that there were snakes that lived in the area and fed on the smaller creatures. Finding a snake on my property was inevitable. I was just so surprised that he was so big and right below my kitchen window! He was 4 feet at least. Normally I am not a squeamish person. I have 3 sons and have been though surgeries, broken bones, stitches, one of them put a tooth through a lower lip. There has been plenty of blood, vomit and poo over the years. It was messy, but as a mom we just do it to get through it and it becomes a memory and usually some kind of cool scar with a good story. This snake was a lot different than that. Animal entrails are not something I am used to seeing. I had a lot of trouble with this one. I think it was the maggots that did me in. I was glad that my son and my husband between the two of them removed and disposed of this liquid carcass. We are pretty confident that it was just a garden snake and not a rattle snake based on his color pattern and lack of rattle on the tail.
Here is where we started to make conjectures on what happened and how on earth a snake got stuck under my house. My oldest son deduced that it had to be a horrible way to die, and I agreed. I thought he probably ate and then heard someone open the door because we let the dog out at night. He was right in between the two back doors so he couldn’t get away. Maybe he hid under the siding to get away but had a full belly so he got stuck. There was a significant part of him that was more liquid than the rest. That’s why I think he had eaten, all that food and stomach juices It’s so hot back there that he just dehydrated and baked in the sun.
So now that I knew what the smell was, there was a little bit of relief that it wasn’t anything IN my kitchen that stank, but I was at a loss as to how to clean this. I have been cleaning since I was a child. I like the end result. I used to clean houses the summer between my senior year and my freshman year at college. It’s hard work but pays pretty well. I will say that scrubbing liquid snake from under the edge of my house is not one of my favorite Saturday activities. Bleach, disinfectant, dish soap, my drinking straw brushes were the only brushes that fit in that half inch space. Now I have to get more straw brushes. I have scrubbed it at least twice and pulled out chunks of liquid snake both times. It’s pretty gross.
The smell is gone in my kitchen, but the squeamish part of me is going to go back and scrub it again. I will probably pull off that piece of siding and make sure once and for all that there is no more liquid snake under there when we paint the exterior in the future. I need that peace-of-mind.