One lovely June day in 1977, the first summer we stayed in the barn, when Chloe was an infant, Tim had gone off to the Whiting farm with his friend Allen to watch the resident sheep get fleeced. This was the day an off-Island shepherd came to oversee the annual shearing. A kind of ceremonial day.

It was early morning. I had just reached into the bedroom closet to retrieve my ensemble du jour, some jeans and a T-shirt. Looking back at me from the shoulder of a shirt on a hanger inside the closet was a snake. I can’t tell you if it was an equatorial spitting cobra, a death adder or a dusky pigmy rattlesnake. It was a serpent and it was in our bedroom closet and I was barefoot. I must have sucked in my breath, hands flying in the air and disturbed the contents of the closet. The copperhead was now on the floor and I was still barefoot. There’s something daunting about having bare feet within reach of a boa constrictor or a python on your bedroom floor. My mind quickly reviewed the many times I’d gotten up in the night to check on Chloe, bare footing it across the familiar house in the dark, not even thinking about pit vipers or asps.

I quickly dressed, snatched up the baby and headed for the phone, one eye all the time on the black mamba. I watched it slither across the floor, then climb to eye level in a fold in the curtain. I remembered that Tim was out in the middle of a field somewhere with the Whitings and their sheep, basking in the nurturing sunshine. Cell phones didn’t exist yet. Who else could I call? Aha, Tom, who was Tim’s father and our landlord I suppose, although we didn’t pay any rent. And he lived right across the field, a minute away. He said he’d be right over.

As I waited for Tom, I pretended this was a normal day, except that I didn’t make our bed. Chloe and I had breakfast, I did a little kitchen work and waited for Tom. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to rescue us.

Losing hope, I called the police. I talked to the chief himself, George Manter, who was tall, handsome, quietly manly, tough when necessary and widely respected. A Gary Cooper kind of guy. He said he would be right over.

Chloe and I had lunch and she went down for a nap. Finally Tom showed up carrying a golf club. He didn’t play golf. The python boa was still wrapped in the curtain. Tom shook the curtain. Nothing happened; the adder hung on. Tom took a swing with his golf club an the asp rattled his rattle. Tom and I both gasped and looked at each other, alarmed. Tom assumed the golfer stance, feet apart, elbow straight, took another swing and the pit viper flew in an arc out the bedroom back door and was never seen again.

I asked Tom what took him so long to get here and he admitted he needed to build up his courage with a cocktail before coming over.

An hour or two later, Chief Manter showed up. I told him that Tom had dispatched the puff adder out through the bedroom door. He sighed with relief. He said he didn’t much like dealing with snakes.

I’ve been told that any self-respecting snake will make a rattling noise if it’s provoked. I’m told there are no venomous snakes on Martha’s Vineyard. I was told it was probably a garter snake. Yeah, right.

West Tisbury resident Eileen Maley is writing a memoir tentatively titled So Far. This is an excerpt.