Opinion | A cautionary tale from the Great Halloween Blizzard of ’91

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“If a man harbors any sort of fear, it makes him landlord to a ghost.”

— Lloyd C. Douglas, American author

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Who better to describe “The Great Halloween Blizzard of ’91” than William Shakespeare? My students were reading “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” when the storm began. Serendipitously, Titania’s (the “Queen of the Fairies”) poetic description of her enchanted world’s topsy-turvy weather synched with Minnesota’s topsy-turvy once-in-a-lifetime weather event.

Talk about a glorious teaching-learning moment!

Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose; …

The childing autumn, angry winter, change

Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,

By their increase, now knows not which is which …”

The snow began to cover autumn leaves outside the classroom window. We all agreed with giddy anticipation that a White Halloween was coming our way. It was a lovely moment for us.

This made sense to me. I hunkered down in the relative security of a bulky barcalounger, binged on unused bite-size Butterfingers and prayed that Mother Nature would ease up on us through the night. She did not. It was pretty outside, but worsening dire predictions kept me on high alert, along with creepy creaks, thumps, scratching and a weird rhythmic clicking from behind our timeworn ceilings and walls and under the floor.

And then, the rattlesnake.

Those eyes. I’ll never forget those ghoulish eyes glaring up at me from just beyond my stocking feet.

I already knew plenty about rattlesnakes since my days out West.

Cliff Sowle, my native Oregonian neighbor, had schooled me on the do’s and don’ts when (not if) I encountered “one of our Great Basins sunbathing on a dirt road above town. How if she’s napping, back off easy and slow, but if she started rattling don’t bother callin’ in the dogs an’ pissin’ on the fire. Amscray.”

Now, in our living room, this one wasn’t asleep. She was coiled, head already raised, but by the grace of God not rattling, yet. I wanted to holler for my braver-than-I wife. But I didn’t. What if this one lunged? Or what if it slithered into an unknown caliginous cranny in our home? What then?

The rattler remained still. So did I until the standoff was too much for me to bear, and I mad-dashed from the den, through the dining room and onto our kitchen counter, and dialed 911.

“There’s a Great Basin in our living room.”

“Say again?”

“A Great Basin.”

“A rattlesnake!”

At this point, she chuckled. She seemed willing to play along with yet another late-night Halloween prank caller.

“Oh, my. A Great Basin. That’s something!”

I might have whimpered. “Please! What do I do?”

She suggested I put on gloves, heavy ones if I had some, approach the “whatever you just called it” from behind, corral it under a pail or something, then call a wildlife removal outfit.

My wife heard the ruckus. “What’s going on down there?”

“Stay in the bedroom. There’s a Great Basin down here.”

“A what?”

“A rattlesnake.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m coming down.”

My wife is a native New Yorker. In her day, she’d extricated many a cockroach, rodent, trapped bat and disoriented pigeon from her cramped one-room walk-ups. Sizing up the upside-down vegetable bin fortified with the Britannicas and Ninja Turtles, she took charge.

“Get my garden gloves,” she said.

I pleaded with her not to aggravate the rattler more than it was and insisted we take turns standing guard until those wildlife removal people arrived. My wife said no way would they venture out in a blizzard like this one. “It doesn’t matter, I got this. Just get my gloves.”

In one swift, dexterous motion she removed the Brittanica volumes and toy crate, raised the vegetable bin and snagged the snake. I hollered something like, “Look out!” A moment later, relieved but humiliated, I mumbled one word that spoke volumes:

It was a rattlesnake — made of rubber. My wife rolled her eyes, tossed it into Jake’s toy crate and went back to sleep.

The next morning she went easy on me. “You poor guy,” she said.

Dad, not so much. When he heard about his adult son’s self-delusion, his two cents were: “For Pete’s sake, what were you thinking? How could a smart guy like you think a snake just wandered into your living room in the middle of a blizzard?”

How? You had to be there, is all I can say.

I think all of us (“dumb” and “smart”) are susceptible to believing the weird, unproven and impossible — if we’re not careful.