The snake in my bed

I once woke up to a snake in my bed and wrote a poem about it. Here's what happened.

When I was growing up, my mom lived with my step dad in a small house on the edge of a large swathe of undeveloped land. Behind our home, there were a lot of huge trees and tall bushes, and because we lived so close to this virgin land, we often saw an inordinate amount of wild animals in our backyard as well. Sometimes some of these animals got into our home. One night, a snake got into my bedroom and, of all places, fell onto my bed.

I do not know if the snake was in the rafters, and if it was, I couldn't tell you how the snake got there. These are the facts that I do know:

• I do know there was a snake on my bed.

A day or two earlier, I had accidentally broken a pane of glass in my bedroom window, and my bed was against the wall of my bedroom, just under this window. I was asleep that night when I was startled awake by a thump near the foot of my bed. I sat up and, eyes still cloudy with sleep, I saw a tail slithering away. My brain was too foggy to process anything, and so, I dismissed the occurrence as a dream, or the animal as a lizard- which was not unusual- plumped my pillows and went back to sleep.

• I do know that I stumbled upon the snake curled up under my bed

The next morning, as I was cleaning my room, I shifted my bed to clear the dust behind it and came across a snake comfortably curled up in a tight little ring.

I screamed at the top of my lungs and ran from the room, my heart thumping as loudly as my feet.

• I do know that it was a harmless garter snake

At first, everyone ran outside with me, but eventually my brothers went back in and removed the snake. It wasn't poisonous, they said. It was just a garden snake.

Over the years, I used this story and the analogy of the snake to inspire many a tale I told. The position I took then was that you should know who you are in bed with because you'd hate to wake up to the fact that there's a snake in your bed, figuratively speaking. You'd want to be in bed with people you can trust. And this can refer to intimate relationships, or it can be friendships, the people you trust and confide in, even business acquaintances.

Once, I wrote and shared a poem about a bird breaking out of her shell to discover that she was trapped in a nest of snakes. It spoke of innocence and blind trust, a narrow escape and the hardening resolve after survival.

The poem went as follows:

"She woke up in a nest soothed by a lullaby of hissing. She was hungry, she flapped her wings, Stepped unsteadily from her broken shell And onto a carpet of discarded skin.

Wriggling, slithering bodies reminded her that she was hungry. She opened her beak, ready to eat worms. She opened her eyes to see snakes She was shocked to realize that she was dinner, A succulent dish to whet the tongue of those around her.

She did the only thing she could do, she flew. She couldn't fly very well, she fell. Snapping fangs missed but caught a bunch of her tail feathers. She was shaken. Embarrassed. Without a nest. Missing her feathers. Alive.

Feathers, like hair, grow back."

My poem played upon the literary idea of the snake as a slithering and sneaky and deceptive and deadly creature, but there other ways in literature that the snake can and has been depicted. The ouroboros is one example.

Incidentally, despite my natural fear of snakes, the ouroboros or serpent eating its own tail is my avatar- not just here but across platforms where I blog- to depict life's continuous, never ending cycles. I quite like the ouroboros as a symbol of enlightenment, of life's cycle, of continuous, never ending rebirth. And while I have no room for a snake in my bedroom, for me, on this platform, where I am sharing with you my life stories and experiences and thought while simultaneously learning about you and yours, this avatar, the ouroboros is perfect.

But that's me and that's my encounter with snakes, guys. What about you? Have you ever had any scary encounter with animals? And how did you respond?