Two Kinds of Disturbing

Today I got to attend my very first snake feeding.

My buddy, who we'll call "A" got a rat snake for Christmas, and it only gets fed once every two weeks. Of course, that means every two weeks, he gets to watch the snake bite, squeeze and swallow a live mouse. Long story short, we picked up the mouse at some reptile store down the street from A's house. The store gives it to you in a brown paper lunch bag, which didn’t dawn on my until right now as weirdly coinidental, since the little guy was about to be dinner. Or at worst a very late lunch. When you only eat once every other week, I’m sure it doesn’t matter what you call it.

The mouse kept scurrying around inside the bag on the way home, so I decided to name him Mr. Scurry. (Note: It is never a good idea to name something that you know you will be feeding to something else within the half-hour.)

Once home, we drop Mr. Scurry in the cage, and he proceeds to begin sniffing around. The snake, named Vic Mackey after Michael Chiklis’ character on The Shield, does some smelling of his own and springs into action. Mr. Scurry and Vic come face to face for what was about two seconds, at the most, but felt like a lifetime. Mr. Scurry sniffed some more, obviously having never seen a snake before, but unfortunately for him, Vic was all too familiar with mice. Vic struck, biting and coiling up Mr. Scurry in one motion.

Now here’s the disturbing part: Mr. Scurry’s little face was exposed through the coils, so we could see it, with his mouth wide open as Vic literally squeezed the life out of him. Then came the coup de grace: Blood came out of Mr. Scurry’s mouth, like a movie character that has been stabbed or gut-shot. Vic then proceeded to slowly swallow Mr. Scurry whole. When he got near the end of the job, we noticed something odd under Mr. Scurry’s tail. There was a big pink bubble that he didn’t have before the feeding. Vic had squeezed so hard, he blew out Mr. Scurry’s asshole. Blew it right out like Bubble-Yum. Disturbing stuff.

And then I had to decide what was more bizarre: what I had just seen, or the fact that "A" and his roommate "B" (I'm not just using the alphabet in order, these are their initials) had planned a trip to a Raleigh gentlemen’s club at midnight to see a much-advertised “Midget Night.” When we and "B" were all back at the house (having eaten dinner separately), we recapped for "B" the events that took place between Vic and Mr. Scurry.

“So we’re going to see the midget strippers at midnight, right?” "B" asked "A".

“Yeah,” "A" said. “But I’m gonna take a nap first.”

“Okay,” "B" said, leaving the room. “I’m gonna go bake a cake.”

And "B" went to begin baking a cake. And I’m assuming "A" is taking his nap. As for me, I had to pass on midget strippers because, really, how many fucked up things can you see in one day?

Update: Originially, I had used real names, until "A" asked that I use with initials. He also later reported that the midget strippers were "creepy."