It's 9AM

The Real Reason We Don't Drink the Water

Chris Lowry

Oct 02, 2024

Blame it on the Titanboa.

I forgot to do something last night that was going to set something free for you today, but it slipped my mind.

Which was occupied with surviving.

Which was full of grateful thoughts for surviving.

Surviving an encounter with a monster.

We live a hundred yards from a lake.

Maybe less.

It is not much, as far as lakes go.

Don’t picture in your mind skiing and boating and weekend party coves.

This is a fishing lake, connected to a swamp and bottomlands that stretch for miles.

It’s probably not more than twelve feet deep at the lowest point, and it’s full of trees and stumps and secret fishing holes.

There are no motor boats allowed on the lake, which makes it a perfect place to cast a line, or kayak and look at nature.

It is also the perfect place to dump creatures.

Like reptiles.

Like pet snakes.

And there is a resident alligator who cruises the waters from the swamp to the lake and back.

I think they call him Sam.

He’s had his picture in the paper with rare sightings and admonishments from local businesses who border the area.

“Just leave him alone.”

Good advice for dinosaur descendants and bad neighbors.

Once, when driving on the road on the far side of the lake, I saw a giant snake.

A python or boa, curled up near a gutter.

It had to be six or seven feet long, thick body slimy in the headlights.

I pulled a U turn at the next road and raced back to check it, and just watched the last few feet slither into back into the gutter.

Lost to the wet darkness.

I was thinking of this yesterday.

You may recall my statement, I am not a gardener.

I can mow. I can weed. I can rake and scrape and hoe and saw.

I pack the trimmings into a big pile and the city picks it up on Friday’s.

But I don’t do flowers so well.

Which is how the rose garden on the back fence came to be an overgrown mess.

I ignored it. I planned to get to it next time. I thought, “Do it later.”

I took the advice of business owners and “just left it alone.”

So between us and our lake view was a five foot stretch of overgrown thorns, weeds, leaves, thick brush and a solid wall of vegetation calling my name.

Because really, what else does one do when it is 107 outside in August?

My to do list became the get it done today list with a stern warning from the taskmaster.

I dove in.

Not literally, but with the frame of mind that it would all be over in a few hours, and a cold beer waited on the other side.

I am always careful in the backyard because of the lake.

I have uncovered rabbits, possums, king snakes, garden snakes, and once, three juvenile copperheads curled up together.

Thoughts of all of these running through my head as I pulled and tugged, and stacked and ripped weeds out of the earth and made the raised rose bed aright.

Then it got me.

A Titanboa makes an anaconda look like your grandma’s pet corn snake.

They roamed the earth and ate dinosaurs.

Legend states they are still in the wilds of the Amazon, lurking and waiting on the unsuspecting village fisherman or kid swimming.

Who are we to argue with that? Villagers don’t keep birth or death records and people go missing all the time.

A Titanboa roamed into a lake in Arkansas. A huge monster at least twelve, maybe fifteen feet long.

I couldn’t tell exactly over the noise of my shout.

It crawled across the back of my bare hand, startled, and snapped at me with huge fangs. They were dripping with something.

Poison?

I jumped back as it moved toward the ground and burrowed into some fresh turned earth.

Burrowed?

Do snakes burrow?

I know they live in dens underground, but usually they let the little furry creatures do the burrowing, then move in for dinner and a sleep.

From a few feet away, where I landed after a jump, I watched the tail disappear.

Then reason took over.

My twelve foot rampaging Titanboa was really more like a twelve inch nightcrawler earthworm.

Impressive, yes. Deadly?

Only in the retelling.

I laughed at me, and said I was being silly.

The sound of the weedeater would have driven a giant man eating snake mad, and he would have attacked in rage and I’d be sitting in his belly like Jonah in a whale.

Whole.

This was just a big worm, perfect for fishing.

But then I heard the splash and looked out at the water.

All I saw were ripples spreading out in giant circles a few meters off the shore.

But you and I both know what it was really.

Here, I made this free for you today:

Wilde Z – Chaos Zombie adventures

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The Phantom Footsteps FREE