Let’s wind our way through summer, slow as a snake
Few things are as unsettling as waking up in the middle of the night to discover a 16-foot python slithering into your bedroom.
I would imagine. Thank goodness I can only imagine such a thing.
And to be honest, I wish I could erase the memory of the news story that caused me to imagine this in the first place but I can’t, so I’ll share it with you.
Last week, an Australian woman (of course) woke up to find the aforementioned python winding its way around the footboard of her bed, reports the Huffington Post.
So what did Trina Hebberd do? Run for cover? Barricade herself in the bathroom like I did that time I awoke to a bat flying around my bedroom? Scream maniacally for help?
No, she calmly took photos and video. As one does in this day and age, I guess. She seemed neither freaked nor panicked, exclaiming in the video, “Hey, we’ve got a visitor …”
The visitor, by the way, was stretched out across the wall, over a picture frame and coat rack in what I guess is her living room, his upper body angled into her bedroom, his head resting on the footboard of her bed.
So she phoned a snake removal company (because that’s a thing in Australia, evidently) who told her the python was a kangaroo killer, so, phew! Close one! Even though she’d seen the massive snake before and believed he had been living in her roof since at least 2012.
But you know when you’ve had a big meal and just can’t squeeze into those skinny jeans? Well, same for the python and the roof slats. He just couldn’t get into his home. So he slithered into hers.
What it must be like to see a 16-foot python wind its way into the roof of your home and be like, ‘Meh. Whatever. It’s not bothering me.’ And subsequently do nothing about it until it finds its way into your bed. (There’s a joke in there somewhere about relationships but I haven’t had enough coffee, yet.) I freaked out after nearly stepping on a grass snake last week at the Christie Conservation Area.
But I wonder if waking up to a giant snake (again, a joke in there somewhere) is as upsetting as, say, just settling into a summer mindset and being walloped by an ad from a major Canadian retailer, announcing their “End of Season” sale with a photo of a woman in a bathing suit. Are we not just about to celebrate Canada Day? Isn’t the summer just beginning?
I get it, shop owners and marketing geniuses — you want to get a jump on the next season. So by all means, start quietly selling snowsuits and down vests and whatever. But, PLEASE. DO. NOT. RUSH. THE. SUMMER. by announcing an “End of Season” sale.
We are Canadian, for God’s sake. We wait a looooooong time to complain about the humidity while sipping Radler beer on a dock and side-stepping grass snakes. That time is finally here. It is upon us. I have just sorted out which flip-flops I can get away with wearing to work. I have planned out my local lake visits. I have many, many patios still to visit.
So stop. Because if you take away my summer, I will take away my business. And what in the world does this have to do with massive Australian pythons? Not much except that waking up to one would be not quite as upsetting as your ad declaring that the summer is over. In June.
And please don’t tell me they were trying to sell spring as a season. Not here. And certainly not with a photo of a woman in a bathing suit.
On the up side, it appears as if at least one Canadian retailer might be having a sale on swimwear. So have at ‘er, people. While the good weather is still around.