jinian | (no subject)

This morning I dreamed that I was midwifing snakes.

snout (but not always really her, you know how dreams are) and I were working in a Petco-type place run by another friend of mine.

We were in a birdcage-type aisle for some reason and there were two snakes, which we somehow thought were a mated pair. Both turned out to be female and pregnant. (I know how to sex snakes when I'm awake, so I was a little offended when I woke up.) One was striped like a garter snake and one was a gorgeous smoky blue corn snake.

We had been reading a book that told us the mated snakes should wind around each other during the birth, but when it turned out they were both female we had one of them wind around my hand instead. She was just being all happy-snake, but then I noticed the other one (on someone else's hand) was dropping a baby. I've never seen them do it, but garter snakes have fully developed babies in very soft eggs, as I understand. This baby came out covered in a milky membrane and that was it. I reached out to try to catch it, but I missed. It fell about eight inches. I had to tend my own snake then, and I did manage to catch her babies. Damn fool way for snakes to give birth.

Because we had messed up, some of the babies were broken into pieces but still acting alive. Some of those were much larger than babies should have been. Some of them were eating each other even though they were only heads.

But the live babies were tiny and beautiful. Some of them were blue corn snakes, but some were all rose and white and sage. I started waking up as we were trying to find birdcages that they wouldn't crawl out of immediately. Now I want baby snakes. :)