Completed Is Reptile Garden Too Pretentious Of A Name?

[Tazrae]

Timestamp: 47th of Fall, 520 A.V.

Randal Zor was there the first thing the next morning. Tazrae had been up, doing her chores, and had made sure the sacked snakes all got small dishes of water added to their sacks and that they were placed in a warm spot with still enough shade to keep them from being too hot. The Innkeeper never doubted the Founder would follow through with what he said he’d do, but she was nervous about the big snakes staying in sacks overnight.

Randal’s arrival came along with two Ashta pulling a cart between them that was loaded with lumber. He had a sack of nails, U shaped metal that he called staples, and rolls of what looked like carefully formed wire mesh. Tazrae would have liked to meet the metalworker that had crafted the mesh… for it looked intricate and hard to do. Randal had a few bigger pieces of lumber, though they were already cut shorter than she was used to seeing lumber delivered. Most of the wood was raw two by fours that were rough cut. It was typical stuff supplied by the lumber mill, and Tazrae was quick to go out and greet Randal.

Without asking, she helped him carefully unload the cart, pulling lumber off as many boards as she could carry at a time, stacking it up neatly off to one side. When the cart was empty and the bags of nails, staples, and rolls of what Randal called hardware cloth were sitting in a waiting pile, the pair of them retreated to the deck for a quick glass of tea and to discuss the plans for what Randal thought they should build.

As of the previous day, Randal was calling it a reptile shed. But now, it seemed he had other ideas. “I don’t think a shed would work, Tazrae. It gets too hot and humid around here. They’d roast with no way to cool off. You have that stand of wild palms over there which we didn’t touch when we first built The Protea. How about we make a stone path from the front door of your Inn off to the right to that stand of palms. And then within that stand, we put multiple reptile enclosures. They would stand off the ground for air flow and the palms would provide intermittent shade for each snake as long as we keep their enclosures carefully arranged. We could add a broodbox for the eggs that need higher heat in the full sun or at least in the place they get sun for most of the day. Each enclosure would be roofed, snakeproof, just like the brood box would be. You can add hot rocks to the broodbox each night to keep the eggs warm overnight. I could add a firepit near the … what are we going to call this?” He paused, studying Tazrae.

She was already watching the area he proposed to turn into this facility, and she smiled at him suddenly… “The Reptile Garden.” Tazrae said, looking thoughtful. “It’s a pretentious name, but I think what you propose could be completely beautiful tucked in amongst those palms. And if you are thinking of building wardrobe like things mimicking the ones you made for each room, I think those would work well for the snakes, especially if we put driftwood in for them to climb up and loop on if they want to hang around.” Taz added, watching Randal to see what he thought.

[Tazrae]

He nodded. “No walls though. You’ll never get them to cool off. Just like a shed, an enclosed snake enclosure would broil a snake in some of our hottest weather. The walls would be of mesh and each one would have a wardrobe type opening in the front with locks that lock the enclosures so no curious people accidentally open them and release whatever we are containing within them.” He added.

Tazrae nodded, watching Randal begin to sketch out one of the wall-less snake enclosures. She liked how artistically he made it, how much room each snake would have, and depending on how they were placed… each individual animal would have a chance to move from sun to shade at any given time. That was freedom without being free. But it would especially keep the pregnant or newly hatched safely from other predators in the Settlement.

“We have five snakes. I’m going to build eight habitats, to begin with. That way you can have five in use, one for breeding, and two for juveniles and hatchlings.” He said, looking thoughtful. He definitely had enough wood, though if he had enough of the hardware mesh, Taz had no idea.

“Can I help build them?” She said, looking over the plans and making small suggestions. The floors of the ‘wardrobes’ would be solid and so would the roofs. That would help keep the habitat’s square once they were all nailed together. The plans looked simple, but then again sometimes what was on parchment was translated to actual real-life was harder than it seemed.

“Sure. This is pretty simple. I have the measurements all marked out, so we just have to duplicate the cuts by eight.” He said, looking over the plans. He shifted them so she could see easier, and Tazrae nodded. “I’ll start on the corner pieces… the frame of the snake enclosures. It looks like we need four of the four by fours for each corner… four times eight … thirty-two. I need to cut thirty-two four by fours to length for this. Let me get my woodworking kit, my miter saw, and I’ll set up a station out front to start. I’d better get sawing.” She said with a grin, excited to start the project.

She set up two saw-horses next to the pile of four by fours and pulled out her cloth tape measure to begin to mark off the wood. She marked each one carefully, making a thin charcoal line at the cut space. Then she decided to set up her miter box to measure for her, clamping it down to the sawhorse table at one end and then nailing a bit of scrap wood into the makeshift table at the end of the second sawhorse so she could just slot the four by four into the miter box, slide it to the stop, and began her sawing.

Sawing was grueling. Four by fours were thick. They took a lot of effort to saw through. Tazrae dressed in Isuas pants, an oversized shirt and a sun hat for the task. She kept her mane of wild curls tied down by a kerchief. And so all that was left was leaning over, and running the saw methodically back and forth to make the thirty-two cuts necessary to set up the eight enclosures.

Randal got busy next to her. He set up a similar sawhorse table – having taught Tazrae how to do it – and began sawing the wood that would form the connector pieces … the sides, fronts, and floor of each enclosure.

[Tazrae]

Tazrae worked steadily and started to hum as she did. The humming grew and soon enough she was singing.

Last night I had the strangest dream,
It took my breath away.
I woke up with a silent scream
And saw ‘twas the bright day.

All I’d dreamed was still in my mind,
And I could not forget
The visions of a horrid kind
At night born in my head.

I’d dreamed that I was all alone,
Before I was a road
That stretched, ranged, and wound further on,
But there wasn’t any goad

That could drive me to take it — no! —
Nor I had longed for.
But ne’ertheless I had to go
Until two signs I saw.

The road there forked, and those signs said
Where I could get at last.
I felt the fire inside my head,
I had to decide fast.

My watch showed that it was midnight,
Though all was seen by eyes.
“Riverfall,” told one sign — point to the right;
The other, “Paradise.”

“What should I choose? I shouldn’t tell you.
But here I am. And it is beautiful.

Randal smiled at her and continued his work. It seemed it took them bells to get the woodcut. But once it was cut, things went remarkably well. They framed up the enclosures, using a carpenter’s square and nails. The walls went on quickly, the floor easily, and the doors hung with neat hinges that Tazrae had no idea where Randal had gotten them. It was odd seeing the wooden enclosures come together with no walls. The walls had her worried, but the nailing the wood together took her mind off it. When they were done, they had the enclosures all done… save for the walls.

That’s when Randal began to unroll the metal mesh. She wondered if he planned it carefully for the width of the mesh was exactly the width they needed to wrap the enclosures in. He carefully measured out each side, the length of the back, and then cut that exact length off the roll using tin snips. Taz had never seen such things before, but she was more than eager to hold the mesh in place as he drove the staples into the wooden frame, securing the tight mesh up against each enclosure. Since the doors opened up exactly bisecting the front of the snake cages, Randal cut two exactly the same pieces to line the doors with. That way, they could open either one door at a time or both doors depending on what needed to be done in the enclosure and how large the snake was.

Nailing the wardrobe-like structures together and wrapping them with mesh took a lot less time than actually cutting all the wood to shape. Then, when the doors were all covered, Randal pulled sixteen had carved nobs out of a small cotton sack and they drilled holes and screwed the nobs into the door frames to act as handles. Tazrae loved the effect. The wood would wash out in the sun, bleaching to a pale almost white color and would keep the snakes warm or cool depending on how they were arranged under the small grove of palms.

[Tazrae]

The next bit was easier. Tazrae had been saving coconut silk for a while now, namely to control the weeds at the Shrine and around her flowers. She used coconuts a lot in her cooking work for the Inn, so she was never without a ton of them. Plus, once people knew she’d been saving the fine brown downy material, folks had been bringing the brown silk over to her place by the bag full. Now she was glad of how much she had collected, for she shredded it up and lined the floors of each of five of the enclosures to make a thick substrate for the snakes to relax on.

Bree was sent down to the beach to gather driftwood to make sticks and vertical objects the snakes could climb or drape themselves on. Her kitchen was raided for bowls, and five of them came down to the Reptile Garden to go into snake enclosures as water dishes. Then she sent Bree back to the beach – on multiple trips – to gather interesting rocks that were flat and smooth that could also be laid out on the floor of the enclosures to give the snakes a warm place they could bask in the sun on and perhaps retain some heat throughout the night.

Randal and Tazrae carried the cages one by one over to the little grove of palms and fussed over where each would be placed. They were laid out facing each other with a ten-foot space between them that Tazrae could line with stepping stones to control mud in the rainy season. She liked how the place looked when they were almost done. It was discrete but definitely looked like a project. Then, carefully one by one, she fetched the snakes and released them one at a time into individual enclosures.

And it was then that she discovered that they weren’t all iridescent black. One had white pied splashes on his belly, one had a redhead, and one had a red belly… indicating youth according to Randal. Bree peered into the enclosures along with Tazrae, making the Innkeeper glad she’d actually made the garden wide enough for the Ixam to get involved.

After all, Bree was going to be doing the majority of hunting on a weekly basis for the snakes. Tazrae had no ability to find other snakes as Bree could. She was just going to be there to collect them once her lovely mount tracked them down. Randal speculated that the snakes would be brightly colored as they were hatched but grow muted and rich as they got older finally turning into the black iridescence all the adults – even the pied – shared.

Tazrae would have to look for more of the snakes to be sure. She was already planning on using Bree to do so and to transplant live healthy snakes into the Settlement before she tried hatching out any babies the snakes she currently had laid. She wasn’t one to count chickens before the eggs hatched. So at the first ten day that happened after she set up for the snakes, she’d bring one of the Mussurana along and introduce them to the Settlement. She didn’t want anyone killing her transplants.

[Tazrae]

Bree asked her about the stepping stones, and Taz explained they were going to find enough of them to cobble the walkways between the snake enclosures in the garden. Then she indicated a nice cobbled pathway out to the Reptile Garden might be nice as well. That gave Bree something to do and the Ixam set off to go fetch first one, then what became dozens of stepping stones to dig down and nestle in the soil between the snake enclosures.

As for the snakes, they settled in easiest at all. Randal built a little nest box for the biggest girl he thought was egg heavy and lined it with damp sand. The big female almost immediately crawled into the box and coiled up to drop into a heavy sleep. Randal had left the nest box in the sun, and Tazrae could tell the snake loved basking there though she could move into the shade and cool off at any time

Tazrae couldn’t be happier. She didn’t mind the snakes in close proximity to the Inn and she could always carry one up to the deck to teach some of the guests about snakes and snake safety around Syka and out in the jungle. There was really no disadvantage to the snakes being here that Tazrae could think of. It was truthfully a brilliant plan that her and Randal had come up with, and thanks to the cooperation they’d shared, the project had a fantastic start with breeder snakes already in captivity and being made comfortable.

Tazrae was satisfied… her business and knowledge base was expanding. She was growing. And she was proud that she could provide this sort of help after someone else had so thankfully saved her life from a snakebite. She should hate all snakes… the eyelash viper was a horrible experience. But she didn’t. Instead, she was just doubly ready to do something to prevent more bites.

Word Count: 2572

[Tazrae]

Tazrae-

Planning +2, Mathematics +2, Carpentry +5, Construction +5, Singing +1, Body Building +5, Endurance +3, Animal Husbandry (Snake/Ixam) +5

Planning: Modifying Furniture Designs for Snakes/Weather, Carpentry: Knowing How Many Cuts One Needs, Carpentry: Utilizing Metal Mesh, Animal Husbandry: What Snakes Use For Captive Bedding, Animal Husbandry: Enriching Enclosures With Vertical Climbing Structures, Animal Husbandry: Keeping Snakes In Proper Enclosures, Planning: Making Cobbles, Animal Husbandry: Training An Ixam To Help, Animal Husbandry: Utilizing An Ixam To Assist A Building Project