No one answered the door when I knocked, so I knocked again.

I shifted my weight from foot to foot, then I shifted from toe to toe, then I sat down on the Dark Hickory high-performance porch decking. While sitting down, I knocked again.

I got up and lounged in the rattan hanging chair, watching carpenter bees in the sky, a couple of thin wasps on the aged railing made of some unknown wood species, and a jumping spider peeking out at me through one of the gaps in the Dark Hickory high-performance porch decking.

I stopped lounging, brushed my hand against the aluminum wind chimes, and knocked again; more like rapped this time, firmly, with a purpose. Like I’d been diligently practicing knocking in the ten minutes that I’d been lounging.

The door opened and a young man stood in the entryway.

“You have my snake,” I told him.

A young man stood there, in the entryway, between me and my snake.