PepperoniNip first spotted the snake next to the sidewalk. He recorded the snake slithering away, from an elevated position with an easy escape route, of course. I saw the footage. It was the largest snake I've seen not in a zoo or fucking with Samuel L. Jackson.

Around this same time we heard baby birds near the oven in the kitchen. The oven fan vent leads to a hole on the side of the house, which used to be covered. The covering was gone and a bird's nest was in its place.

One day I stopped hearing the baby birds.

The next day I sat on the deck to read The Economist. I looked up at the hole in the wall and saw a dark, coiled, glistening figure protruding out of the hole. I couldn't see a head or tail, and wasn't sure what it was until it moved.

The snake stayed there for a while. And then I checked and he was gone. I assumed he went to the grass where he could basque in the sun. PepperoniNip got up on a chair and peered in with a flashlight. The snake looked at him, his entire body inside the vent. The only thing between the snake and the house was the mesh on the oven fan above the stove.

PepperoniNip called animal control. The woman he spoke to was uncertain whether this fell in their jurisdiction. Only if the snake is inside the house, she said. "You're seriously going to wait until he falls through the mesh?" PepperoniNip said.

Somebody was sent. A female police officer showed up in an animal control van. What a great way for the county to save money. "This is just a rat snake, he's harmless," she said, holding the snake with those tong things.

"Easy for you to say—you're the one with the gun," PepperoniNip said. The officer took the snake to the woods.

A day later PepperoniNip saw the snake in the same spot as before, next to the sidewalk. Enough was enough. PepperoniNip had had it with the snake on the sidewalk. PepperoniNip drove to his favorite store, Lowe's, and bought shovels. As they say, the rest is history. Notice the baby birds digesting.