Today I can exclusively reveal the facts behind a brief story that ran in The Washington Post on June 9, 1947. The story appeared on Page B1 under the headline “3-Ft. Snake Fails to Tilt Man’s Eyelid.” I quote it in its entirety:
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“It would excite most persons, but Thomas Fitzgibbons didn’t even lift an eyelid when a 3-foot snake wriggled off the rear roof of his house at 1831 Belmont st. nw. yesterday.
“Fitzgibbons, who was reading his newspaper on the rear porch, calmly watched the snake glide away. However, less complacent neighbors called the police, who captured the reptile and took it to the Zoo. It was a king snake, harmless and very handy at devouring insects.”
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If you have spent the last 75 years wondering how that snake got there, Dan Mulville of Vienna, Va., is happy to tell you.
Dan had a cousin in Mississippi named Richard Newkirk who came up for a visit. Accompanying Richard was his pet snake, Pretzel.
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“We were living in Bethesda at the time, and my mother, who was not fond of snakes, insisted that he take the snake away immediately,” Dan wrote.
Another aunt, Mary Milligan, was apparently less afraid of snakes. Richard went to stay with her, taking Pretzel in its cardboard box to her apartment on Belmont Road. She did insist the snake stay on the back porch, since no one wanted it in the house.
“No surprise there,” Dan wrote.
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But then it rained. The cardboard box got wet and Pretzel escaped. It caused quite a stir in the neighborhood, though apparently did not fluster the aforementioned Thomas Fitzgibbons, who continued to calmly read his newspaper as the snake dropped from above like a python from a jungle tree branch.
After it was captured, the snake was taken to the reptile house at the zoo. Dan, Richard and their families were among the many Washingtonians who went to see Pretzel.
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“We were given strict instructions by our cousin to say nothing and not wave at the snake or call his name as we passed by his display case,” Dan wrote. “At the time no one admitted having any knowledge of the origin or ownership of the snake found in the backyard of the apartment building.”
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Richard Newkirk died 2019 in Madison, Miss., at the age of 89.
Dan figured it was time to own up — “or, as they say, let the ‘snake’ out of the bag,” he wrote.
If anyone else has a confession to make — the whereabouts of stolen loot or buried bodies — I’m happy to be the recipient.
From no legs to four legs: Mike Mansfield of Rutherford in Fairfax County is among those homeowners who share the land with foxes. Mike is sharing even more.
“I set up a golf chipping area in my backyard, complete with a huge net near my property line,” he wrote. “One evening I neglected to pick up about 30 golf balls, leaving them scattered about. The next morning, I looked out my bedroom window and noticed all the balls were gone.”
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Mike figured an animal must have pilfered them, so he set up an infrared motion-detecting camera and scattered a few golf balls as bait. The next day, the balls were gone. The camera had caught a fox in the act.
Mike figures the den must be close by.
“That’s a lot of work to take 30 golf balls out of a fenced-in yard in one evening,” he wrote. “I’m thinking he could only fit one golf ball in his mouth at a time. My guess is he — or she — thought they were eggs of some sort.”
The fox apparently left some of the stolen golf balls in a neighbor’s yard. Wrote Mike: “The lady of the house went ballistic on me, yelling at me to stop hitting balls into her backyard and to stop acting like a jerk. It was quite a tongue-lashing. I just gave her a thumbs-up, said nothing and turned around and walked away.”
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Most often, I hear about foxes because they’ve stolen the newspaper. (They’re avid readers.) Sharon Moores of Woodbridge shared a photo of some different vulpine behavior.
“Zoom in on the paper,” she instructed, of the nicely framed photo she took last month of a bagged Washington Post sitting on a thin blanket of snow that’s traversed by paw prints.
Wait. What’s that yellow puddle?
“I don’t know if the fox was marking the paper or rendering judgment, but it made me laugh out loud,” Sharon wrote. “I unsheathed the paper very carefully while still outside.”