At first I thought it was an earthworm on the floor of our kitchen but it was too skinny to be a worm. And earthworms aren’t black. About four inches long, it lay coiled towards the center of the floor but slithered quickly off towards the kitchen sink as I approached and into a small hole between the linoleum and the bottom of the cabinet under the sick.

I opened the cabinet door just in time to see it slither down into the opening between the bottom of the cabinet and the kitchen sink drain pipe and into the crawl space under the house.

It looked like either a baby black snake or rat snake. I wondered if its mother had found her way into our crawl space and hatched her eggs.

Our crawl space is almost deep enough to be a basement — a little over five feet high. Amy can stand up in the space but I must stoop. I picked up a flashlight and ventured into the crawl space but found no signs of reptile life. I suspect the baby was small enough to crawl in through one of the vents to our crawl space and then found its way up the drain pipe into the kitchen. Mama is probably raising her young in the woods that comprise our back yard.

Which explains why we haven’t seen any mice lately.