Chapter 18
As Erin continued to ponder what to do about the snakes, her knees began to wobble and she turned away from the writhing creatures, taking a moment to collect herself.
As she did, she spied a couple of guests dressed in bathing suits and holding a straw bag coming in through the gate from the gardens.
Yikes.
‘Hello there, beautiful day, isn’t it?’ she greeted cheerfully as she hurried towards the newcomers. She stood up tall and spread her arms wide in an attempt to obstruct their view of the pool itself.
‘Yes, we’re heading to the pool,’ the woman said, smiling politely.
‘I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but the pool is closed at the moment.
Some maintenance issues …’ The woman and her companion tried to look past her, no doubt hoping to determine what the issue might be.
‘But if you would like to head to the beach instead, I will call down and have someone set up chairs and a parasol for you? And a couple of pina coladas too, on the house.’
Erin pointed to a path that led to the beach in the opposite direction.
The man looked annoyed. ‘It’s quite inconvenient actually. We were really hoping to get some content for my girlfriend’s social media channel.’ Was it Erin’s imagination or was he eyeing her meaningfully – as if she should make some kind of exception?
‘No, Greg, it’s fine, the beach sounds perfect, actually,’ his companion said, smiling, and noting their accents and the overbearing boyfriend, Erin quickly deduced that this must be the British influencer Grant had flagged a few days ago.
Cripes, she hoped the guy wasn’t planning his big proposal right now …
Lily hadn’t mentioned any big plans for today, but if so, it was the kind of proposal that would be memorable for all the wrong reasons. And one the resort definitely didn’t want broadcasted online to a huge audience.
‘Wonderful,’ Erin sang. ‘You two head on down, and I’ll get everything taken care of.’
She took a deep breath as the woman thanked her once again, and duly took off down the path towards the beach.
Though it was obvious the boyfriend wasn’t too impressed.
She’d arrange to pop by or deliver something to their room later by way of further apology so they wouldn’t be tempted to bad-mouth the place.
But in the meantime, crisis averted. Or one at least.
She then dug out her phone and sent a quick message to the beachside attendants, letting them know of the promises she had made and that they should make a suitable fuss of the couple, before pinging another to Lily asking her to call her back ASAP.
That much squared away, Erin turned her attention back to the pool and was relieved to see some of the housekeeping staff duly arrive with caution signs, which the pool attendants used to secure a wide perimeter around the terrace.
This would at least buy them some more time to figure out what to do.
‘Did you get hold of animal control?’ she asked the pool attendant approaching her again with an unreadable facial expression.
‘Yes. Good news and bad news …’ he said, and she prayed that he had a misplaced sense of humour.
‘Tell me the good news,’ she said, inwardly holding her breath.
‘They’re not venomous, or highly aggressive.’
Erin smiled as relief washed over her. ‘Great, so we can get them out?’
‘That’s the bad news. They are indeed a protected species. So we have to use the utmost care when handling them. Scooping them out with a net is apparently a no-no because it’s too stressful …’
Stressful for the snakes – or the staff?
‘So unless we can figure out another way,’ he continued, ‘we need to wait for the experts to come and deal with them.’
And how long would that take? Erin already knew how slowly things moved on the island and since the snakes weren’t a danger she couldn’t imagine animal control would be in any great hurry.
But for the sake of The Palms’ reputation, their guests’ (and indeed her own) blood pressure, she needed them out of their pool – fast.
‘OK, let me think …’ She put her hand to her forehead, in an attempt to alleviate some of the pressure she felt mounting behind her eyes.
Then thought again about the idea of maybe putting some kind of ramp into the water for the snakes to crawl out on their own.
‘Stay here and make sure to keep the pool hidden from any guests as best you can, OK? I have an idea.’
She hurried back through the double doors into the lobby only to collide hard with someone on the way out.
‘Woah, where’s the fire?’ Mack asked, standing back to look at her. ‘And why is the floor all wet?’
Seriously? Erin couldn’t believe that someone hadn’t yet called a cleaning team to mop up after the pool stampede. This day truly kept getting worse and worse.
‘Sorry, just dealing with something,’ she muttered, trying to appear unflappable in front of him, of all people.
‘Erin, how on earth did snakes end up in our main pool?’ the general manager, who’d suddenly materialised alongside her, demanded.
Damnit.
‘We’ll look into that later, Grant. Right now I’m trying to find a way to get them out of the pool without injuring them …’
Erin felt like throttling him for mentioning their emergency in front of any guest, much less an important corporate client like Daniel MacKenzie, but knew better than to show it. It was doubly frustrating too that not only was Grant late to the scene but didn’t have any solutions to add either.
‘Snakes? What kind of snakes?’ Mack asked, frowning.
‘I’m not sure. They’re very long, very black, and very … wriggly.’ Erin used all of her inner strength to prevent herself from visibly shuddering as she spoke.
‘Rat snakes, sounds like,’ he stated matter-of-factly. ‘Let me see them. If I’m right, they aren’t water creatures, so we need to get them out fast.’
Seems he and Grant were both very good at pointing out the obvious.
‘Thanks, but I can assure you that my staff are fully equipped to handle the situation,’ Erin told him, just as the sound of yelling filled the air once again.
All three headed back out to the pool, where now one of the attendants was jumping up and down in agitation.
‘Did you see how long that one’s tongue was?’ he cried, cringing.
Mack took off the linen jacket he was wearing and rolled up his shirt sleeves.
‘Like I was saying, these mostly live in trees so are great at climbing. We need to find them something to climb. Is this the longest net you have?’ he asked, picking up one the pool attendants used from the ground.
‘Yes, we use that to clean the deep end.’
‘But we’re not supposed to scoop them …’ Erin’s protestation trailed off as Mack took the net and walked to the side of the pool where four of the snakes were currently gathered. Holding the net side closest to his body, he lowered the long handle, more of a pole really, into the water.
Erin was almost too terrified to speak as one of the wet shiny snakes wrapped its body around the pole, though Mack’s grip remained firm as the creature slithered its way up along and close to his arm. Once the snake was fully wrapped around the pole, he hoisted it out of the water.
She took a few steps away, as he carried both creature and pole away from the pool area. Then stopped once he reached the tropical plant border framing the outer perimeter of the terrace. He set the net down and the snake uncoiled itself and headed for safety.
Erin let out a sigh of relief as she watched the creature depart into the bushes. One down, nine or so more to go.
‘See, great climbers,’ Mack commented as he carried the net back towards the water. He lowered the pole into the water same as before and sure enough, another snake hurried towards it and began wrapping its body tightly around it.
‘Thank you, Mack, I’m sure our attendants can handle it from here.’ Erin glanced meaningfully towards the staff member closest to her, who was watching with his mouth agape.
‘That’s OK. I’m happy to stick around and make sure they remain unharmed. They’re beautiful creatures.’
‘Well, since you seem to have it all under control, I’d better check in on our guests …’ Grant muttered, evidently happy not to have to get his hands dirty. ‘Make sure nobody filmed anything.’
‘Good idea.’ Erin swallowed. She hadn’t thought of that. Still, recalling the frenzied rush, she very much doubted that anyone would have bothered to stop and record proceedings, but yet wasn’t that par for the course these days?
‘Can I help with anything?’ she asked Mack after his fifth or so rescue.
‘You want to hold the pole?’ he said, a grin on his face. She took a step in his direction at the edge of the water right as a massive snake turned and hissed at them.
‘I uh …’ She tried to think of a logical excuse as to why she wouldn’t go that far, but Mack’s laughter reassured her he was only kidding.
‘These guys are pretty heavy. Don’t worry, I’ll get the rest.’
She continued to watch with some relief as Mack once again lifted out the net, this time with two large snakes wrapped around it. She could tell their weight was indeed significant by the way the muscles in his back flexed through his white cotton shirt that was now streaked with sweat.
‘OK, well, I really owe you one for this,’ Erin commented, grateful that at least there was someone on the premises qualified to solve the latest crisis.
But taken with Eugenie Cooke’s warning, and Mack’s assurance that they weren’t water creatures, she couldn’t help but wonder how on earth all those snakes had got in the pool in the first place.