A Dishwasher Can Be A Place Of Danger

Dishwashers can be very useful. You can wash dishes, glasses and silverware in them. They can heat their own water. They will even sanitize and dry your dishes for you, and if you tend to be lazy you can use them to store your dishes. They can do all sorts of wonderful things these days. However, you might be surprised at some of the things that can be found in a dishwasher on any given day.

I read one post recently where someone was talking about chasing roaches in their dishwasher and being freaked out about it. I live in Florida. Seeing a roach scurrying in the dishwasher is seen as a good reason to shut it up and start it running. No more roach. You can always put it on the sanitizing cycle. Other things that I have discovered in my dishwasher have been lizards, mosquitos, June bugs, and on one occasion a sleeping cat...I told you early on that one of my cats is not very bright. Clothes dryers, dishwashers...Scud just views them as either a place with very good smells to investigate or another convenient place to take a nap. One early morning however, something appeared in my dishwasher that I did not ever expect to find.

It was about 8:00 a.m. on a Friday morning. Maria, the maid had already arrived and with rubber gloves and spray cleaner was attempting to clean the children's bathroom. I was wearing a flannel nightgown that was about 2 sizes too big for me. It had teddy bears all over it. My sister had sent it to me for Christmas, and since I needed to do the laundry I had worn it to bed the night before. It is needless to say that my husband was NOT fond of this nightgown. So here we were.

I walked from the livingroom into the kitchen towards the dishwasher and let out a very loud scream. Now, I am NOT a screamer. Maria knew this, so she came running, rubber gloves and spray cleaner in hand. Leaping at me out of my dishwasher was a snake! He (or she) was not at all happy about being caught out in the open. Maria, also not a screamer, and expecting something worse, only let out a gasp. OK, now to be fair, I am not exactly a morning person. Seeing a snake leaping out of my dishwasher at that hour of the morning was just a little bit beyond me!

Having a cooler head than I, Maria (who IS a morning person) quickly took charge. (I don't know, maybe she had had this experience before) She immediately raised her rubber-gloved hand, aimed her spray cleaner and sprayed the snake in its face. It was not happy about this. It decided to try to return to the depths of the dishwasher. Maria would have none of that! She grabbed the last of the retreating snake by the end of its tail and yelled for me to open the front door. Who was I to argue? Maria with the snake in her rubber gloved hand went running out the front door. One would hope that that would be the end of the story... you know, she would throw that snake out the door and that would be it. No such luck.

Maria sprinted out the front door, snake in hand. Just as she was revving up to toss the snake, her foot came down on the tile on the front porch, still covered with morning dew, and slid forward...as did the other foot. In fact, Maria went flying up into the air and came down on her backside which just missed hitting the sharp corner of the front porch. She did scream this time and I gasped. She started shreeking something about the snake, and I kept asking her if she was okay.

Eventually I realized that she thought that she was sitting ON the snake and had no idea of her close call with the tile porch. I was seeing a trip to the emergency room and dollar signs associated with law suits and she was worried about being bitten on the butt by the snake. Eventually I realized she seemed okay and she spotted the snake making a path for the front door to re-enter the house.

The next few moments are a bit hazy to me now, but somehow I ended up with hoe trying to cut the snake up...which of course didn't work. I then had a very heavy axe-sledge hammer combo which I think my youngest son brought to me (probably after me yelling for him to get me something to kill the snake). I had managed to pin the snake down in the grass with the hoe, so once the axe-thingy arrived, I had Maria hold the hoe, and I started to viciously attack the snake.

OK, now you have got to picture this. Maria, with rubber gloves is holding the hoe so that the blade is pressing the snake down into the grass. I am wearing this adorable oversized flannel nightgown with teddybears and am raising the axe-thingy and pounding it down on top of the snake. At this very moment an old man out for his morning walk came ambling down the street in front of our house. Now he saw us, probably couldn't see the snake which was pushed down into the grass, and didn't know whether to pretend that he was not seeing anything at all, or thought that some lunatics were trying some new method of weed removal. I looked up and smiled and went back to my pounding and he kept walking. He did have a strange look on his face. I am sure that I never saw him again. He probably chose another route for his morning walk after that.

Well, the snake was apparently dead. Maria and I were laughing hysterically at this point, and I think my children were hiding in the house. I became aware that I was still standing in the front yard with my nightgown on and ushered Maria and I into the house. I made sure that she was okay and told her to let me know if she had any side effects from her wild ride. She decided to finish early that day. I took a shower and got dressed.

Later that night when my husband got home I told him about the horrific incident. He went outside to see what the demonic creature looked like that had been lurking in our dishwasher. He came back in laughing. It seems that when not in the heat of the moment, so to speak, the snake was actually not that big. He had imagined something at least 5 feet from my description of what we had to do to kill the thing. WELL, it WAS 8:00 in the morning!