Snake in the Office

I wish that today's blog post title was merely the title of the sequel to a cheesey Samuel L. Jackson movie, but unfortunately it's not. When I got to work this morning, one of my co-workers informed me that a snake had been found outside our training room. I am terribly frightened of snakes. I can't even look at them on TV or in books or magazines. So the thought of having one in our office totally freaked me out, for multiple reasons:

1. Our offices (including the training room) occupy the SECOND floor of our building. We've had snakes get into our downstairs lobby before, but one has never ventured upstairs. Until now. So we have a very agile snake on our hands.

2. The snake was found by the cleaning crew last night. They put (or threw, not sure which) a dumbbell over it and posted signs warning us of the snake. The dumbbell didn't kill the snake, and apparently the cleaning crew was too freaked out themselves to actually get rid of it.

3. According to the signs left by the freaked out cleaning crew, they found the snake at 7:44 p.m. One of my co-workers and I stayed late after work last night to do a workout DVD in the training room. Did I mention that the snake was found right outside the training room? For all we know it could have been slithering around while Jillian was kicking our butts last night. Believe me, if I'd spotted it while we were working out, I would have run faster than any other workout in my life.

4. I was told that the snake is the same color as our carpet. So it was well-camouflaged. Which of course begs the question, how many other snakes are lurking about disguised as our carpet?

5. Yet another co-worker took the snake outside this morning, and left it alive. She claimed that it had been maimed by the dumbbell and couldn't slither back inside, but I'm skeptical. I contend that this was a scout snake, sent in on a reconnaissance mission to spy out our offices. Now that it knows the lay of the land, it will go back and tell all its snake cohorts how to get into the building and up to the second floor, the best places to hide, where we keep food, etc.

6. This same co-worker thinks that the snake was not some little harmless thing but a small copperhead instead.

I thus spent the better part of the day staring at the carpet looking for snake eyes and listening for hissing sounds. If the snake or any of his pals show up again, I won't need to blog about it. You'll probably be able to hear my screams from here.