Made The Rest Of That Shift Just Snake Along

I have a tattoo on my arm of a snake, which generally leads to questions about it, and if I like snakes, or I’ll be talking with coworkers about my snakes, as I own six.

There’s an older gentleman who loves to come in for daily lottery scratch-offs and tickets, and he usually asks everyone if they want mushrooms he foraged himself or not. 

Today, he came in asking about snakes.

Customer: “Do you like them?”

Me: “Yes.”

Customer: “You’ll get a snake one day.”

Like, yeah, I have six, I know. I go about my day as I would, because work.

This guy comes in later and says:

Customer: “I got you a snake.”

He brings in a to-go plastic box with a mushroom, some grass, some fish, worms, and a tiny snake in this thing. I’m shocked.

Me: “Um, what?”

He hands me the to-go box and says:

Customer: “I caught him eating my fish, here you go!”

It’s this tiny Dekay’s brown snake (native to my area). Now I have a tiny snake that I’m going to release in my backyard instead because, just, what even. I’m not even sure how to respond to that. 

My last few hours had a tiny, angry snake next to me as I was checking out customers at the gas station.