Once upon a time, I found a milksnake in my alley. Well, if you've read enough of this blog over the years, you'll know that that doesn't sound all that unusual. But this story is different. It's a short story about an unlikely predicament - and the value of being in the right place at the right time.
July 12, 2017 started as a normal Wednesday. I was at work when shortly before noon, I received a DM from someone on the Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association Facebook page (to clarify, there isn't, or wasn't, an actual association - at least not like the weird, self-important ones out here in the far western burbs. I think it was just a loose conglomerate of minor community leaders and other loud people). I was told that a Jefferson Park resident had made a most unusual discovery - a snake that appeared to be pinned under a garbage can in the alley. The snake was red and white, which didn't make sense to me. So I asked for the resident to take a photo.
The photo that was sent to me shortly afterward really had me perplexed. It looked like an amelanistic milksnake of Mexican origin, maybe a Nelson's milksnake. These are somewhat popular in the exotic pet trade. How did the snake end up in an alley, stuck under a garbage can?
I did what any self-respecting snake advocate would do. I left work (in the Hermosa community) on my lunch break and high-tailed it to Jefferson Park. En route, an absolute gusher of a downpour slowed my progress as traffic turned bumper to bumper along Milwaukee Avenue. I'm talking buckets.
The rain was letting up by the time I arrived to the scene. The homeowner, a nice lady, came out to meet me and hand me an empty shoebox. She then pointed me in the direction of the snake. She refused to get within 10 feet of the scene and told me that getting those photos earlier took all of the courage she had. I approached the garbage can, and watched in horror as the snake, still firmly pinned, struggled to surface under a steadily rushing torrent of stormwater as it made its way toward the drain.
I wasted no time in lifting the full and VERY heavy garbage can up and collecting the snake. It was definitely an amelanistic milksnake, either nelsoni or a bastardized mutt as some of these captive-produced morphs tend to be. Skinny, limp, and lethargic, I didn't hold much hope for this one. I put it in the shoebox, thanked the homeowner, and went home to put the snake into a darker and more secure enclosure it may quietly expire in. I figured the internal injuries were devastating enough to render the snake doomed. Then I returned to work and didn't think much about it.
When I arrived home several hours later, the snake was still alive, so I set it up in a small glass terrarium. After a few days, I offered it food, which it eventually accepted. I was still skeptical that it was a success story because part of its body had been smashed flat for at least two hours and I couldn't imagine that its organs would function properly. But they did. It accepted food each subsequent feeding (and pooped normally), though its feeding habit was odd. I found that the snake would only eat if teased by the food item to the point of spastic throws of its body and manic zoomies around its enclosure for a minute, after which it would strike defensively and then hork down the food.
Someone else from the association reached out and asked me to speak to their meeting about the snake, and I used this as an opportunity to expand on the native snakes of Chicago. A reporter from the Chicago Northwest Side Press was present and interviewed me after my presentation for an article that appeared on the front page on October 4 (slow news week I guess). It's kind of ironic that I was referred to as a "lifelong Jefferson Park resident", when by the time the article was published, we were in the process of moving to our current home out in northwest DuPage County.
Shortly after the snake's rescue
Eight years later, the snake is still with us, living out its rather luxurious life along with a few other snakes in the house. Rehoming didn't make much sense - the story is too wild.
