Pythons: I Always Expect the Unexpected – But Maybe Not When It’s THIS Unexpected

Pythons in a Man’s Pants: I Always Expect the Unexpected – But Maybe Not When It’s THIS Unexpected

– Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com

I’m one of those people who often sees the twist coming, be it in a fictional context like a movie, or an ostensibly nonfiction context like an American election. 

For example, back in early 2016, when many friends of mine were still laughing at the then-unlikely-seeming notion Donald Trump might become President, I was already asking myself who Trump might pardon, once granted the unfettered power to offer such. I eventually settled on Charles Manson being the most outrageous (and therefor most likely) possibility – but then Manson up and died and Trump had to settle for Charles Manafort, who had the name closest to Manson’s in the Pardon Telephone Directory, I guess.

So THAT’s Where I Parked It!

Even when an item in the news sounds quite strange at first glance – like, say, authorities finding a car reported stolen in 1992 buried in the yard of a $15 million mansion –  sometime you can peruse the details of the story and conclude it’s not that surprising, let alone unforeseeable, after all.

In the story linked above, for example, the mansion in question was “built by a man with a history of arrests for murder, attempted murder and insurance fraud,” which makes his old house sound to me like just the sort of place a car reported stolen in 1992 might turn up, if one were to dig in the right spot.

I don’t suppose they also found one-half of a pair of knee-high socks with cute little bugs on them buried in his yard, by chance? I’ve already tried the washer, drier, dishwashing machine and my husband’s underwear drawer, so I’m fresh out of ideas for where to look next.

See You Later, Alligator… In Idaho?

Still, just because I see a lot of things coming doesn’t mean I see everything coming. Heck, if my husband were to bring me flowers when he comes home from work this evening, it would surprise the hell of out me – and give me great cause for concern, as the only plausible explanation would be that he has somehow confused Halloween for Valentine’s Day.

Similarly, if I were out walking in a rural neighborhood about 40 miles north of Boise, Idaho, I think I’d mighty surprised to spot an alligator lurking in the bushes. After all, Boise is quite far from an alligator’s natural habitat, which of course we all know to be the sewers of New York City.

Is That Three Pythons in Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

Speaking of finding animals where you don’t expect them, this brings us (at last!) to the reason I sat down to write this post today: literal “trouser snakes”.

Trouser snake has always been among my favorite euphemisms for “penis”, in part because even the word “trousers” by itself is enough to get me grinning. But, add “snake” to that? Fuggedaboutit – that’s a recipe for me to wind up in Giggle City…. Where, ideally, they do not have alligators in the sewers. (Or the bushes.)

Where was I? Oh, that’s right; trouser snakes.

“A New York City man has been charged with smuggling three Burmese pythons in his pants at a U.S-Canadian border crossing,” reports the Associated Press.

Beyond the obvious, one thing that jumped out to me about this story was the date of the incident that led to the man’s arrest: July 15, 2018. 

How on earth did this man successfully smuggle three pythons in his pants and avoid arrest for over four years thereafter? Were the pythons in his pants this whole time? What size pants does this man wear? Are these 1980s-era parachute pants equipped with pockets not only large enough to conceal a python toddler, but to accommodate its growth into a teenage mutant ninja python of some kind?

Snakes Get Misidentified All the Time; Are We Sure They’re Burmese? 

Given the medium in which they were smuggled, my hunch is these alleged ‘Burmese’ pythons were, in fact, ball pythons (also called “royal pythons”, because that’s just how highly men think of their balls, I guess) and that they were babies at the time when the smuggler originally boarded the bus that brought him and his various balls to New York.

According to the experts at EverythingReptiles.com, ball python hatchlings are between 10 and 17 inches at birth (granted, men are well-known for exaggerating the size of their trouser snakes, so these figures should be taken with a grain of salt), and then grow at a rate of 8 inches per year for males and 12-16 inches for females.

By my calculations, at the time of his arrest, this guy had somewhere in the range of 54”-115” of snake in his pants, total – a fact that could not have been subtle. Of course, it’s probably the case that pythons that have been confined to a man’s slacks grow more slowly than pythons in the wild, so it’s hard to be too confident in these calculations.