I have always been fascinated with snakes. When I was younger especially. I would dream about being allowed to buy a pet one, like a ball python or a California kingsnake. My sister Phoebe, on the other hand, has always been terrified of snakes, so getting one wasn’t an option. The closest I got was when I received a huge cobra stuffed animal in second grade. This stuffed cobra was my pride and joy. I would act like it was real, even pretending to feed it mice. My sister is pretty afraid of snakes, but her fear is nothing compared to the fear of her best friend’s mom. Phoebe had a best friend, named Florika, and Florika’s mom was DEATHLY afraid of snakes. She couldn’t even look at fake ones, or see them on TV.

One day, Florika and her mom came over to our apartment. Phoebe and Florika were in the room that me and Phoebe shared, our moms were sitting at the table drinking tea, and I was sitting near them in the living room building a dinosaur out of LEGOs. Everything was peaceful, and I was almost done building my T-Rex, when all of a sudden I see Phoebe and Florika sneaking out from our room, quietly giggling. Suspicious, I momentarily stopped building to watch what they were doing. As they emerged further from the hallway, I could see they were carrying my cobra. They creeped up behind Florika’s mom, threw the cobra onto her, and then ran away laughing. Florika’s mom, confused, picked up whatever had just hit her on the back, and when she saw what it was, she let out an ear piercing scream. She jumped up from her chair still screaming, ran to the door, opened it, and left. My mom was still sitting at the table, her jaw hanging.

My mom finally processed what had just happened, and ran to me and Phoebe’s room. She yelled so loudly at phoebe that the whole apartment seemed to shake. While she was screaming, I went over to our front door and opened it to see if Florika’s mom was still there. She was sitting on the stairs panting, with a hand over her forehead. I went back in to get mom. Mom rushed outside and bombarded Florika’s mom with apologies and “it’ll never happen again”s and “I can’t believe they did that”s. Florika’s mom acted like it was fine, but she never came back to our house again.