The Christmas Edition
Welcome to the Christmas edition of The Possum Cop Chronicles. This one is going to be all over the place. Isn’t that what this time of year is all about — everybody runnin’ around, steppin’ and fetchin’ trying to get all their ducks in a row for Christmas? I guarantee you that’s what Santa’s up to.
I feel like I ought to start with a disclaimer. Back in June of 2023, I wrote a story called “You can learn a lot around a campfire,” in which I extolled the joys of spider hunting. I’m no longer extolling. Ladies and gentlemen, beware! Spider hunting is a gateway drug.
Why? Well, I was looking for my seven-year-old son Miles’s letter to Santa printed in the Dec. 13 issue of the Pleasanton Express. Miles hadn’t said anything about his letter to my wife or me — DUH, Santa doesn’t have anything to do with parents — but I didn’t want to duplicate anything Santa might bring. In his letter, Miles said he wanted a “safe pet cage” and something about hoping Santa likes the “cuces” he got him.
I was aghast. Cuces??? As a proofreader for the paper and the 1972 Pleasanton Elementary Spelling Bee Champion of the entire first grade, I took great offense that my son couldn’t spell “cookies”. Oh, the shame. Oh well, I got over it. What I won’t get over, for a while anyway, is the tarantula he wants under the tree to go in that “safe pet cage” he wants Santa to bring.
So, I decided to do some research on big spiders in cages and go to an exotic pet expo this past weekend. Talk about a trip. They had all kinds of stuff for sale: lizards, snakes, roaches, scorpions, spiders, turtles, toads and just about anything else you can think of that’d make most people run the other way. To get in the building, they make you sign a waiver certifying that “you have knowledge and notice of the potentially dangerous propensity” of the animals at the expo and the “potential risk of injury” they pose. I’ll say! A couple of vendors there had literal rattling rattlesnakes secured in containers that looked like the Tupperware my grandmother used to bring her lime green Jello salad to the family Christmas party in. Sheesh!
Yep, there were some sure-enough crazy people at the exotic expo. I mean, let’s talk honestly here. Most people that get a dog or a cat don’t get tattoos and piercings that match their pet. This is not true for many in the exotic pet crowd. Walking around, I saw a couple of dudes with lizard-like scaling tattooed on every inch of skin that wasn’t covered by clothing, except their faces. I really don’t want to ponder whether or not the tattooing continued beyond what could be seen. And then there was another, less extensively, tattooed dude with a two-and-a-half-foot lizard on his back that saw me and said, “First timer, huh?”
And there it was — the only thing he left out was, “What agency do you work for?” I got that a lot as a game warden. When I tried to work incognito or undercover, it didn’t work for me. Once, I even donned a wig and a Molly Hatchet t-shirt to work a big red snapper case in Port Mansfield but didn’t dare do anything but discreetly film activity from afar for fear of being made. I worked with guys who were really good at it. They could grow their hair a little long, put a dip in their mouth, head down to the local dive bar and blend right in. That just wasn’t me.
But now that I’m retired, I don’t have to worry about all that. There was one guy at the expo selling rattlesnakes, among other things, and wearing a shirt that said “Getting Bit Sucks” on the back. He was complaining about his local game warden up-country somewhere and going on and on about what a stickler the game warden was. I had to eavesdrop. But after all his complaints, he ended by saying something like, “But the law is the law and he's just doing his job. He’s actually a nice guy.”
And that’s a lot of what I found at the exotic pet show. I talked to a lot of people, and though I’m not cool with having a rattlesnake as a pet, everyone was nice and very accepting of the funny cop-looking dude who was wandering around with his hands in his pockets telling his son, “Don’t touch that!” a heckuva lot — even lizard tattoo guy.
Wow — did I just discover the true meaning of Christmas at the exotic pet expo? Nah — but Miles may get a tarantula under the tree. He’ll have to wait a while to get the matching tattoo.
Merry Christmas, everybody, and Happy New Year, too!
Jon Brauchle spent 29 years as a game warden.
