When we visited Florida, my three year-old daughter saw a snake.  It was a harmless black snake, but menacing nonetheless, coiled up in a bush with frog legs dangling from its mouth.  (From the frog’s perspective, I guess the snake was not so harmless.)  Apparently, this sighting made a lasting impression on my daughter, as she has recently existed in an imaginary Reptilian World where man-eating snakes outnumber humans 10 to 1, maybe because snakes have already eaten most everyone.

It is currently impossible to have a conversation without the mention of snakes.  This would be considered annoying and dismissed by most parents, but as writers of extraordinary talent often do, I have again utilized the melodrama of everyday life to create great art.  The play, posted below in its entirety, chronicles the trials and tribulations associated with raising two daughters, one of which is obsessed with snakes.
The Snake Girl Cometh
A Play in One Act
Interior, Hemstreet home, an hour before sunrise.  Mom, Dad and daughters are seated at the breakfast table.  They all eat Cheerios, despite the fact that they all think Cheerios taste about as good as petrified wood.  Cheerios help reduce Mom and Dad’s cholesterol, so they all must suffer together because that’s what good families do.  Mom and Dad wash down the whole-grain meal with 32 oz mugs of coffee in hopes of clearing the fog that has resided in their heads for the last three years.  Dad looks very hung-over, but he is not. This is just how he looks these days. 

Daughter: Daddy, last night snakes chased me because they want to eat me up.

Dad: Really?

Daughter: Yep, they chase me and crawl all over me because they wanted to eat me.

Mom: Honey, there are no snakes around in the winter.  They’re all asleep in their homes.  It’s too cold outside.

Daughter: Yes there are, Mommy.  There are snakes everywhere.  They want to eat me up.  I am so scared of them.

Dad: Snakes won’t eat you.  Snakes are afraid of people?  If they see a person, they run the other way.

Daughter: Snakes don’t eat people?

Dad suddenly remembers an email he received containing photographs of a partially digested man being cut out of an Anaconda…and then, unfortunately, he remembers that movie with Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez where a big snake kept to a strict diet of several humans per day.  Dad thinks for a second about recanting his original statement, that snakes don’t eat people, and showing his daughter the photos.  Dad believes it is important to be honest with kids, but honesty has landed him in hot water before.  Like the time he told her that she’d never see the neighbor’s dog again because Mo-Mo had been run over by a semi-truck and was now buried deep in the ground where the worms were eating his body in the same way Daddy eats a Hooter’s chicken wing (He also feels it is important to be descriptive).  This time, however, Dad wisely decides to continue lying.

Dad: No, snakes don’t eat people.  Snakes are nice.

Daughter: No, they are mean.  They bite people.

Dad: No, snakes run away from people.  They don’t eat them.

Daughter: Snakes don’t run, Daddy. They don’t have legs.  Only long tails.

Dad: You’re right.  I forgot.

Daughter: What do snakes eat?

Dad: They eat frogs and mice.

Daughter: And rats?

Dad: Maybe rats.

Daughter: Will a snake eat Remy?

Remy, the leading man in her favorite animated feature, is a rat.

Dad: No, Sweetie.  A snake won’t eat Remy.

Daughter: Yes they will!  Snakes want to eat him!  Snakes eat rats and they would eat Remy because they think he would be delicious!

Dad: Don’t worry.  Remy is safe.  He lives in a city called Paris.  There are no snakes in Paris.

Daughter: Well, a snake from Florida can go to Paris on an airplane and sit in his own little snake seat.  And then he will get off the plane and eat Remy.

Dad relents, realizing that his daughter has gone off the deep end with this snake thing.

Dad: Yeah, I guess you’re right.  I forgot that snakes could just hop a flight to Paris.

Daughter: Oh, no.  Remy is going to get eaten.  Oh, no.  I’m so sad.

Dad: Would anyone like another bowl of Cheerios?

Daddy fills everyone’s bowl and downs the rest of his coffee without taking a breath.

Lights fade to black.Curtain.