Having served his two years of active duty in the U. S. Navy, 20-year-old Eli Eggers was actively pursuing the next phase of his life.  He had fought two shipboard fires during his term of duty, so becoming a fireman and Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) seemed like a natural field in which to obtain an education and training.  He enrolled in the firefighting and EMT program at Chemeketa Community College at Salem, Oregon, and found himself as part of the fire crew in the nearby town of Aurora.

Answering a fire alarm at a house, Eli and his crewmates found the owner in the yard.  "I load guns," he told them.

"Do you mean you load guns, or do you load ammunition?" Eli asked.

"Yeah, that's what I mean.  I load ammunition.  I have 40 pounds of gunpowder in that room up there," the man said, as he indicated an upstairs window.

"Let's not search that room," Eli said to his partner.

While firefighters are connecting hoses and preparing to turn water on a fire, another team makes a quick search inside the building to verify that no one is inside.  Eli and his partner began the probe.  They were upstairs in the middle of the room next to the man's reloading room when the gunpowder ignited.  When the two men came to their senses, Eli guessed that two or more minutes had elapsed.  They found themselves against the far wall of the room with the wall of the reloading room lying on top of them.  They were helpless to extract themselves.  The explosion had put out the fire, and the rest of the fire crew rapidly got them out from under the wall.

This wasn't the only time that Eli had been the subject of a "Mayday," and wasn't to be the last.  A Mayday is a call that goes out signaling to the fire crew that one of their men is in trouble.  The fire chief was talking to Eli one day, and marveled that he was just a "Probie" (short for "probationary"—a trainee) yet had been the subject of Maydays that had killed many another fireman.  Just 10 minutes later a fire alarm sounded.  Eli was on the last day of his three-day shift.  The crew had recently returned from another fire, was tired, and hadn't yet finished caring for and cleaning up their equipment, yet they sprang into action.

The fire was in the first story of a house.  Eli and his partner hurried into the house to probe it for occupants.  At the head of the stairs on the second story, Eli gingerly tested the floor before stepping into the smoke-filled room.  He could see nothing through the smoke.  He stepped into the room.  The next thing he knew was that he was groggy, and didn't know where he was.  In his grogginess he knew that he had to have his helmet, and began feeling around for it.  It took several minutes before he realized that it was properly in place on his head, and before he could figure out what had happened.  The floor had given way, and he was in the basement!  He had fallen from the second floor, through the fire on the first floor, and was sitting two floors below where he'd been.

Meanwhile, Eli's partner was upstairs trying to determine what had happened to his friend.  Eli had been right in front of him, but was suddenly gone, and wasn't answering his calls.  Was he in the room?  Was he in trouble?  He didn't dare step into the room because the reason for Eli's disappearance might have been the collapse of the floor.  It was so smoky that he couldn't see the hole through which Eli had fallen.  He sent a Mayday outside, and several more firemen scrambled up the stairs to his aid.

Eli got stumblingly to his feet, found the stairs, made his way up, unbarred the door, and found himself facing the fire chief.  The fire chief speechlessly pointed at Eli.  Then he pointed upstairs, then back at Eli.

"I took the elevator to the basement," Eli said in explanation.  "I'm going out to see the medic."  The toes on his left foot were jammed, and the knuckle of one was broken, but otherwise he quickly recovered from his wild "elevator" ride.

Eli's next adventure was again on the second story of a smoke-filled house.  Again he was the lead man as he and his partner made a survey of the house.  The upstairs was so full of smoke that Eli crawled into the room.  Only the lower two or three inches of air were clear of smoke.  Eli encountered a pipe, and crawled over it.  The "pipe" curled itself around him from ankles to neck, and he found himself struggling for air as the breath was being squeezed out of him.  Since he had been in the act of crawling, his arms were squeezed against his chest, and his hands were up by his neck.  That position helped just a little to counteract the tremendous pressure that was squeezing his chest.  It also gave one hand access to the control that enabled him to turn up the oxygen that he was receiving into his helmet.  What he didn't have, however, was enough air or the ability to call for help.

"Eggers, Eggers, where are you?" Eli's companion called.  Eli couldn't answer.  His companion crawled into the room, found Eli, diagnosed the situation, and issued a Mayday.  "I need twelve men up here," he called.  "Eggers is wrapped up in a snake."  He thought the situation was funny.

The men came on the run.  Eli weighs 200 pounds.  The snake weighed 400.  Four brawny firemen picked up the 600-pound bundle, carried it downstairs, and out into the yard.  Several of the firemen were inclined to kill the snake to get it off Eli, but a medic present who knew a little more about such situations warned them that the death throes of such a snake would only cause it to tighten up more, and Eli would be killed.  The twelve firemen, therefore, took hold of the 400-pound, 24-foot-long boa constrictor and physically uncoiled it from around Eli's body.  It was their strength against the snake's.  It was a hard job.

There were fang marks on Eli's helmet where the snake had bit him as it began the effort to swallow him.  Since it had been in the process of trying to kill Eli, the firemen were of the opinion that he should have the honor of killing it.  A chopping block was put in place, and an ax was given to Eli.  The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife arrived just then.  They forbade the killing of the snake because they needed the snake for evidence.  The department had been aware that wildlife was being illegally harbored in that particular house, and had hurried there upon being informed that the house was on fire.

"There were some crispy critters in that house when we went through it after the fire," Eli said.  "There were some big birds, and some cages, and one skeleton looked like it might have been a mountain lion.  The people weren't found or they'd have been arrested.

"I wasn't going to tell my parents about my close calls, because I didn't want them to think that I was in a dangerous occupation.  Everyone in my family hates snakes so much, though, that I couldn't keep from telling them that story.  I ended up telling them all my stories.  I leave tomorrow for Afghanistan.  I'm in the Naval reserve, and I've been called up to be a rifleman/mechanic with a bunch of Marines.  It shouldn't be any more dangerous than what I've already been through."