Lost snake $100 reward

This past Saturday, in the heat of other personal drama, I discovered through our neighbors that Quincy the snake had somehow escaped from the house. (Fallen out the window? Took the stairs? Dumb waiter?) My kind neighbors put up an actual ad on Craigslist. 

Once it sunk in that my snake was loose in the neighborhood of East 28th Street, I realized to my horror that chances of ever finding her again were pretty much close to nil. That went over well, as you can imagine. After prodigious weeping and tearing of hair on chest, I managed to pull myself together enough to distribute flyers (the first draft was totally incomprehensible, full of blowsy sentiments and history of the snake, outrageous reward offers, etc.) and bother the neighbors, door to door. I quickly remembered that it is universally understood that Everybody Hates Snakes, a creepy feeling shared by all cultures: Chinese, Black, Vietnamese, White, Latino, Creole...So each emotional plea on my part was met with animosity and barely contained disgust ("Sure, I'll keep my eyes peeled and look around the backyard" followed by subtle nostril flaring and eye bulges).

I finally went knocking on the door of the doctor who lives in a huge Victorian mansion with acreage surrounding his property directly behind us, and when he proved to be absent, left him a flyer, then poked around his backyard with BR with no success. Woodpiles, bushes, dead leaves, cat poop. No snake. So we started the walk back to the doctor's front gate, which is long since he has a formidable sized front yard. Still leaking tears and hiccuping sobs, I kept scanning the ground for gory snake remains and as my eyes passed over to the right side of the gravel path, not but a few inches from where my foot trod, there was....a dappled pink/orange snake, hesitantly inching forward in full exposed sunlight (very unsnake like behavior! But then again, Quincy is not knowing of birds and raccoons and cats and stray dogs. bleh) It was a MIRACLE OF BUDDHA. One lucky snake. And one lucky, lucky, blessed snake mom.