Staff writer
Friday morning coffee at Lanning Pharmacy was interrupted when an unwanted visitor reared its slithery head.
Employee Dorothy Shipman was moving some inventory when she looked down to discover a small, green snake jumping at her hand.
“I looked down right as he jumped at me,” she said. “Then I screamed and fell backward.”
Fortunately for Shipman, a crew of regular coffee drinkers were on hand to apprehend the intrusive reptile, who was just over a foot in length.
“My heroes rescued me,” she said.
Those heroes included Mayor Todd Heistchmidt and Jeremiah Lange.
Heitschmidt and Lange corralled the skinny beast by putting a plastic bin over it, then sliding a piece of construction paper underneath and flipping the bin over with the paper on top so the snake fell into the bin, where he could not get out.
As Lange, pastor at Marion Presbyterian Church, brought the captive creature outside, employees urged him to kill it, or at least to “take that thing very far away from here.”
Lange then walked the snake, who was at this point rather irritable, to a nearby line of trees and released it.
“I’m not one to kill snakes,” Lange said.
Upon his return, Lange was both thanked and chided for his efforts. One employee wished he had taken the snake further away.
“That didn’t take nearly long enough,” an employee said.