Crawly creatures in the boiler room
It’s hard enough dealing with angry
customers at the front counter of a drycleaning plant, so how
do you handle a 5' snake who has taken up residence in the
boiler room?
In Oak Forest, IL, staff members of
Betscher Cleaners recently confronted a bullsnake who did not
want to leave his warm, new-found home.
According to plant owner Dave Betscher, it
wasn’t the first time a slithering reptile had invaded
the premises.
“From time to time my manager,
Linda Delia, would be walking along and there would be a
snake on the floor,” he explained. “The first time
it happened, she just got a stick and a hanger and flipped it
out the door — as a customer was walking in.”
It was obvious that the location had a
recurring snake problem, so Betscher tried to rectify the
situation by patching up any holes and cracks in the walls with
foam. Unfortunately, that didn’t work, much to one
employee’s dismay.
“One day, at a quarter to seven at
night — before closing — one girl was passing
through the boiler room and she happened to look up,”
Betscher said. “There was a snake wrapped around the
conduit up in the ceiling sort of looking at her. We’re
talking about a five footer. That is very intimidating. So, she
screamed hysterically. The other girl there at the time said,
‘I thought she was being raped.’ So, you know what
they did? They closed the store up at 7 o’clock and went
home. They didn’t tell anybody.”
On the following morning — a
Saturday — manager Delia arrived at 6 am and worked about
a half hour before the phone rang. One of the girls from the
previous night had decided to call her and inform her about the
snake. Delia went to the location and was surprised to see that
it hadn’t budged.
Of course, she had already chased out
three other serpents before, but none of them were quite so
large. However, Delia’s fear of customers seeing the
snake was bigger than seeing the beast itself.
“I just wanted to get it out of the
store,” she recalled. “I didn’t want it in
here in case customers walked in.”
Betscher, arrived shortly after to find
Delia attempting to chase the reptile away with wasp spray.
Neither could identify the breed of the unwanted intruder.
“I know it’s a bull snake now
— non-poisonous. But, these bull snakes have little
rattles on the end of their tails and they’re green and
are really thick, fat snakes,” Betscher said. “I
ran around and got a broom and started whacking it. By this
point, the snake was thoroughly ticked off. The thing flapped
down on the floor in a thud. It coiled up and started spitting
at us. It was rattling its tail, hissing at us and we
didn’t know what kind it was.”
Both Delia and Betscher searched for a
bucket to trap it in. Delia came back first.
“She found a bucket and a stick and
a broom before I knew it,” Betscher said. “About
two minutes later she had swept this thing into a bucket and we
lidded it.”
“I was kind of a tomboy when I was
younger, so it didn’t really bother me until he started
shaking his little tail at me,” Delia noted. “I
thought, ‘Oh, maybe it’s a
rattlesnake’.”
The snake remained in the bucket until
Monday morning when a wildlife professional arrived to take it
away, attempt to revive it, and then eventually return it to
the wild.
The package plant location has only been a
part of Betscher’s for about a year. The company, which
was started by Betscher’s grandfather in 1898, has two
other locations in Illinois and has earned Bronze star status
in the state’s environmental star drycleaning program.
Betscher is a third generation cleaner who
has served as a board member on the Illinois State Fabricare
Association for over a decade. He tried to look at the bright
side of the incident.
“Well, at least I didn’t have
to pay unemployment comp when I got rid of him,” he said.
Delia, who has been a plant employee for
over 20 years, also joked about the matter, hinting that maybe
her boss didn’t want her around either.
“Dave’s trying to get rid of
me, but he can’t. This snake thing ain’t working
and nothing else will either,” she laughed.
 |
