The Reptile Room (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #2)

by Lemony Snicket

“Eojip!” Sunny shrieked, taking a bite of carrot. She probably meant something along the lines of “I would be thrilled to bite an enormous length of rope into small, workable pieces!”

never, under any circumstances, let the Virginian Wolfsnake near a typewriter.

For instance, sometimes when I am walking along the seashore, or visiting the grave of a friend, I will remember a day, a long time ago, when I didn’t bring a flashlight with me to a place where I should have brought a flashlight, and the results were disastrous. Why didn’t I bring a flashlight? I think to myself, even though it is too late to do anything about it. I should have brought a flashlight.

Sunny, of course, had not been born four years ago, and she sat and tried to remember what that was like. Very dark, she thought, with nothing to bite.

“It must have fallen from the window,” Uncle Monty said, pointing up to where Klaus’s room was. “Whose room is that? Klaus, I believe it is yours. You must be more careful. You can’t dangle heavy objects out the window like that. Look what almost happened.”

“How clever of you to figure that out,” said a voice at the top of the stairs, and Violet and Klaus were so surprised they almost dropped the lamp. It was Stephano, or, if you prefer, it was Count Olaf. It was the bad guy.

“José!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant something like “No way!”

“I’m afraid the engine is quite dead,” Mr. Poe called out. “And before long,” Stephano muttered to the children, “you will be too.”

It is very unnerving to be proven wrong, particularly when you are really right and the person who is really wrong is the one who is proving you wrong and proving himself, wrongly, right. Right?

“The children are upset over Dr. Montgomery’s murder, so I don’t expect them to be on their best behavior.” “Murder?” Violet said. She turned to Stephano and tried to look as if she were merely politely curious, instead of enraged. “Why did you say murder, Stephano?” Stephano’s face darkened, and his hands clenched at his sides. It looked like there was nothing he wanted to do more than scratch out Violet’s eyes. “I misspoke,” he said finally.

“Ackroid!” Sunny said, which probably meant something like “Roger!”

The word “hackneyed” here means “used by so, so many writers that by the time Lemony Snicket uses it, it is a tiresome cliché.” “Meanwhile, back at the ranch” is a phrase used to link what is going on in one part of the story to what is going on in another part of the story, and it has nothing to do with cows or with horses or with any people who work in rural areas where ranches are, or even with ranch dressing, which is creamy and put on salads.

The story’s moral, of course, ought to be “Never live somewhere where wolves are running around loose,” but whoever read you the story probably told you that the moral was not to lie. This is an absurd moral, for you and I both know that sometimes not only is it good to lie, it is necessary to lie.

You will recall that the wolf, after being treated very rudely by Little Red Riding Hood, ate the little girl’s grandmother and put on her clothing as a disguise. It is this aspect of the story that is the most ridiculous, because one would think that even a girl as dim-witted as Little Red Riding Hood could tell in an instant the difference between her grandmother and a wolf dressed in a nightgown and fuzzy slippers. If you know somebody very well, like your grandmother or your baby sister, you will know when they are real and when they are fake. This is why, as Sunny began to scream, Violet and Klaus could tell immediately that her scream was absolutely fake.

“Golly! Good God! Blessed Allah! Zeus and Hera! Mary and Joseph! Nathaniel Hawthorne! Don’t touch her! Grab her! Move closer! Run away! Don’t move! Kill the snake! Leave it alone! Give it some food! Don’t let it bite her! Lure the snake away! Here, snakey! Here, snakey snakey!”

We all know, of course, that we should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever fiddle around in any way with electric devices. Never. There are two reasons for this. One is that you can get electrocuted, which is not only deadly but very unpleasant, and the other is that you a...

The reason it is difficult to find a needle in a haystack, of course, is that out of all the things in a haystack, the needle is only one of them. If, however, you were looking for anything in a haystack, that wouldn’t be difficult at all, because once you started sifting through the haystack you would most certainly find something: hay, of course, but also dirt, bugs, a few farming tools, and maybe even a man who had escaped from prison and was hiding there.

“It was an emergency,” Violet said calmly, “so I picked the lock.” “How did you do that?” Mr. Poe asked. “Nice girls shouldn’t know how to do such things.” “My sister is a nice girl,” Klaus said, “and she knows how to do all sorts of things.”