For a long time, Helen stayed undaunted. She took notes in the Best Practices Binder. She crossed strategies off the list. She added new ones. We moved to humane traps. We found one at the feed store, a metal box to place a mouse in. We bought an extra trap to catch live mice to use as bait. “Not so humane for the mice,” observed Karen, baring her wait-and-see smile. Helen bit her lip and didn’t respond. The traps actually seemed to attract more snakes. It was like word got out that we were providing captive mice for free, and every black snake from miles around came to see if it was true. It was true.

Once I found Perley, in his dinosaur footie pajamas, squatting near the trap, elbows on knees, head down to peer into the slotted window. “One, two, three,” he said.

“One, two, three, what?” I asked.

“One, two, three snakes in the trap,” Perley said, so I got down next to him to look, and there they were, three snakes writhing together in a ball, fighting over a mouse that had long since been reduced to tail and speck of innard. “Three snakes,” said Perley. “Zero mouse.” That was how he learned to count.

In their trap, we carried the snakes all the way to the bottom of the driveway. We carried them across the creek and released them. We tried to get them hopelessly lost. But theirs was a tale of courage and bravery, a tale of homecoming. They always found their way back to us.

Karen’s final victory came one morning when I woke up to Perley laughing softly next to me in bed. He lay on his side spooned into me, his back to my belly. He was playing with something against the wall, something I couldn’t see.

“Good morning, my Piglet, what have you got there?” I asked.

“My snake came home,” Perley said, and raised his arm to show me. A black snake coiled twice around his arm. I went for it, swiped that snake down Perley’s arm like taking off a bracelet, then swung my baby out of bed and onto the floor, falling headlong over Karen. She woke up.

“What the fuck, you’re crushing me,” she said. Perley and I knelt on the floor beside the bed. Sulfur engulfed us. The snake fled to the far corner of the mattress, stiffened into crimps. Karen sat up.

“It was in the bed with us,” I said.

“What was?” she asked.

“The snake,” I said, pointing. The snake, as if ashamed, seethed down into the crack between the bed and the wall.

“Perley, did you bring that snake into the bed?” asked Karen.

“When I woke up my snake was next to me,” Perley said. “Mama L said gentle touch.”