The annual “Slippery Noodle Invitational” in Oakhaven wasn’t a sanctioned sporting event so much as it was a collective lapse in judgment involving adrenaline and thick leather gloves that most participants chose not to wear.
Leading the pack was Barnaby “The Human Hook” Higgins, a man whose skin had the texture of a sun-dried brisket and who claimed he could smell a copperhead’s mood from three miles away.
Opposite him was Gary, who had prepared by reading a single Wikipedia article on herpetology forty minutes prior and was now wearing cargo shorts that offered zero protection but a lot of pocket space for snacks.
As the group crept into the marshy tall grass, Barnaby suddenly froze and pointed a gnarled finger at a patch of mud.
There, basking in a single ray of sunlight, was a five-foot black racer that looked fast, sleek, and entirely uninterested in being held by a man named Gary.
Barnaby whispered that Gary had to commit because hesitation would result in the snake ending up inside his pant leg. Gary nodded, sweating profusely, and declared he was one hundred percent committed.
Gary lunged, though it wasn’t the graceful pounce of a leopard; it was more like a bag of wet flour falling off a truck.
He managed to pin the middle of the snake to the mud, but he’d forgotten the most important rule of biology: snakes have two ends, and one of them is significantly pointier than the other.
The racer, understandably miffed, performed a U-turn that would make a Formula 1 driver jealous. Gary shrieked that he had it just as the snake decided to inspect his watch.
What followed was a high-stakes interpretative dance.
Gary spun in circles, holding the snake’s midsection like a rhythmic gymnast’s ribbon, while the snake whipped around trying to figure out why this hairless ape smelled like nacho cheese Doritos.
Barnaby yelled for Gary to grab the neck, but Gary screamed back that the entire animal was just one long tube of anger. In the scuffle, Gary tripped over a cypress knee and went down.
The snake went up, and for one brief, majestic second, the black racer was airborne.
It landed squarely around the neck of the local librarian, Mrs. Gable, who was only there to document the local flora.
Mrs. Gable didn’t scream or faint. She simply reached up, pinched the snake behind the head with the practiced precision of someone who had spent forty years shushing rowdy teenagers, and handed it back to a trembling Gary.
She adjusted her spectacles and informed him that it was a non-venomous constrictor and that his grip was appalling, noting that he was holding it like a burrito rather than a predator.
Gary retired from snake catching that afternoon and decided to take up the much safer hobby of competitive bee hugging.
Source: X.com