Smilie. And Smilie the second through the nineteenth. 19 was HUGE. Over three feet long. I tied him to the oil pipe next to the back door steps. I was coming home from school (7 years old) and running across the field in back of our house at lunch time because I saw my old man coming home for lunch. He spotted my snake whilst on the landing of the back door steps and leaped over the railing, trouncing soundly on 19's head. He held it up, saw the string I stopped dead in my tracks. He saw me. He gave me shit for keeping a wild animal tied up. No more snakes. He bought me a puppy. A beagle.

I like snakes better.