I have a girlfriend, Tana, who collects reptiles. She especially loves beautiful snakes, and one day she was lucky enough to get her hands on a real prize: a big, beautiful reticulated python that she had been raising as a pet since she was an egg. The snake was very tame and she liked to cuddle up with nice, warm humans. She never bit, never hit people with her nose and never squeezed too hard, but she did like to cuddle and explore the sleeves.

Tana was delighted with her python, but she had a little problem: she had nowhere to store it. She asked me to babysit her new pet for the rest of the day, and possibly overnight, until she could purchase and set up a suitable cage for her. The snake wouldn’t be a problem, she insisted; he had been fed a few days before and had just had a drink of water, so she would not need any special care for a while. I agreed to take care of the snake, since he had a cold and was not going anywhere. I intended to spend the rest of the day and night wrapped in warm pajamas and a warm fleece robe, doing nothing but sitting in an easy chair, watching TV, and swallowing cold tablets.

This arrangement went down well with the snake, who was happy to wrap around my waist under the wool robe and enjoy the hugs. So we both sat on the couch, the python and I, watching TV and getting warm. After a while, the snake felt comfortable enough to explore a bit: it crawled up my side, across my shoulder, and into the left sleeve of my robe. I didn’t particularly mind, as there was plenty of room for both of us in the loose sleeve.

And then someone knocked on the door. I let my roommate answer, which was a mistake because he was a kind soul who couldn’t say no when, you guessed it, pesky religious salesmen insisted on shoving into the house. He just pointed the religious plagues at me, he gave me an apologetic look and ran away.

I was trying to think of a polite way to tell them to go away when they started talking. At that moment I felt the head of the snake slowly pass by my elbow, and that gave me a better idea.

“Wait,” I told him. “Thank you, but I already have a religion that suits me very well. I’m… a witch.” Well, I knew a few people who were, anyway.

Being in California, where the religion of witches, called Wicca, has legal status, the sellers of religion at least had more sense than to say that I was going straight to hell. Instead they tried to insist that their religion was better and offered much better benefits.

Meanwhile, the snake made its way to my wrist.

“But my religion,” I added, “teaches me to do magic, real magic.”

What kind of magic, they wanted to know.

“First of all, transformations,” I said, as I clasped my hands together and pinched the ends of the sleeves together. “I can turn into non-human creatures.”

Of course, the religious plagues expressed doubt that he could do this.

Meanwhile, out of sight, I pulled my left arm up through the loose sleeve so that my hand was covered by the fabric. The python’s head was now protruding from the end of the sleeve and it began to poke at the right sleeve.

“Oh, but I can,” I insisted, and then began chanting the names of various goddesses from ancient mythology: “Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Innana, Isis!”

When I got to the last name, I spread my hands (and sleeves) and raised my arms. Yes, there was my right hand, the same as always…

But where my left hand should have been, the python head and a good six inches of neck stuck out of the sleeve. The serpent added to the effect by clicking his tongue at the sellers of religion. Well, they went pretty fast. I had to call my roommate to close the front door after them.

After that, I tucked the python’s head back into the waistband of my robe, swallowed another cold pill, and kept surfing until I found a rerun of “Star Trek.” Tana showed up before she finished the show, having found and set up a nice snake cage much quicker than she expected. We uncoiled the snake from me, wound it around her waist, and she put her coat over herself.

As he headed for the door he thought to ask, “Did Snakey have a problem?”

“Oh no,” I smiled. “He behaved very well, really.”

Needless to add, the annoying religious vendors never knocked on my door again.