Snake Removal at Carrot Top’s House

04.20.2006 - This was actually my second time to this customer's house in Winter Park, part of Orlando FL. Both times his assistant and himself referred to him as Scott, but I recognized him as the prop comedian who goes by the name Carrot Top. I guess he's kind of hard to miss, and the walls of his house are adorned with various Carrot Top propaganda. My first call to his home came because he had a terrible odor in his house. I knew that it was a dead squirrel. His house was large with a very complex architecture, and the area of the attic above the room with the strongest odor was inaccessible. It was earlier in my career, before I had become the best dead animal extractor on the planet, and it was one of the very few, and by that I mean single other (I've only had two) failures in my life. I'll never fail to find a dead animal again. Anyway, in his case, I could not get to the area in the vaulted cathedral ceiling, and didn't have ladder high enough to sniff every square inch of space - which is the only real way to find it in such circumstances, and I left the house defeated and with none of that comedy money in my pocket.

This day, however, would be different. He called about a snake on his property. The property is large and filled with debris, but this time I would not fail. I searched and searched, and finally found it under his wooden boardwalk by the lake. As usual, the customer thought that it was a venomous snake, and in this case, the appearance was actually close to the dangerous cottonmouth. However, it was in fact a non-venomous Brown Water Snake. All aquatic snakes are heavy-bodied like the cottonmouth, and often do look similar. This was a nice specimen. It was also very aggressive, striking at every opportunity. However, if bitten, I'd have only suffered some small puncture wounds and maybe some extra bleeding due to anticoagulants in the snake's saliva. Carrot Top was not keen on getting close to the snake, but did manage this one photograph. He's been hitting the gym quite a bit lately, but his bulky muscles offered no protection against the natural fear of snakes that he, like many people, had. I bagged the snake, collected my precious money, and drove off to relocate the snake far away. Although snakes are feared by many people, from skinny poor accountants with dark buzz-cut hair and the opposite sort of fellow, the truth is that snakes are an important part of the ecosystem, and though they should be treated with respect, they should not be feared or persecuted. And that's no laughing matter.

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