When parents allow their kids to leave pets at their house..

In 2009, my daughter left her tri-colored hognose snake at my house when she moved. At first, she'd drive down from Lexington, Ky, to our Morehead farm, to feed it, clean its aquarium.

But after two months, I found myself thawing frozen baby mice, cleaning up snake skins, trying to find something the snake wouldn't throw up the next day,

adjusting the aquarium temperature, spraying down the tank. My ex, DB, did the spraying, and I shuddered as I thawed pinkies-tiny underdeveloped mice. Then one day the snake started going round

and round the cage, obviously needing something. I fed it eight pinkies in ten days but it still acted agitated. I finally mentally asked it what

it wanted, using my imagination. I imagined that the snake "said" it needed to travel on, go somewhere else.
But why?
When my daughter next called, she said the snake needed

its bedding changed so wanted to move to a cleaner place. She said she only used a custom bark blend she'd special ordered, but didn't know where the bag was.

Desperate, that day we found a farmhouse that sold reptile supplies, got a bag of Forest Bark fir bark. The snake noticed me cleaning half of the cage, came out to follow my hand,

seeming to hurry me, so I put down a small amount of fresh bark along the clean end of tank. The snake dove into it, disappeared, leaving me to clean the rest of the aquarium.

When I got the tank scrubbed, the snake's head reemerged, and it stared pointedly at me until I remembered to spray down the tank. Then the snake vanished under the bark again.

I told DB, "Jeesh! How bossy can you get? But I suppose if humans are going to bring these things in from the wild, the least we can do is take care of them properly.."

We then began plotting to sneak the snake tank into my daughter's back seat next time she visited.
As bait, we mentioned that we'd finished the last of of the Quantum Leap DVDs, so she and her boyfriend could borrow them.