Yesterday, while everyone else was playing capture the flipflop, Thunduh was in her room chatting on the phone, when she spied a snake…right outside her window. It was staring her right in the face, and was very close. Travis was just coming into the house at the time, so she made her startling announcement that there was a snake.  Travis, not to be easily shaken, calmly walked over to her window and peered out at the distant rock, the trees, looking everywhere except for at the snake, that was now about a foot from his face! When he made the discovery of his imminent danger, he bolted for the machete.

We were playing…like I said before, when Travis’ cries of snake reached our ears. I was taking pictures of the games, so I grabbed the camera, and like the brave missionary that I am, I  made my way out the door…behind all the kids. Elani is also brave, and so she was right behind me. We looked at the trees nearby, since they said it was in a tree, and did not see a crowd gathered round. Then, Elani pointed towards my room, and said “Momo, your room is shaking!”. Oh no, I thought. I don’t want the snake to be in the tree outside of my room…that might be dangerous! (my room is next to Thunduh’s room, so we couldn’t tell the difference)  So, we halted our progress on the path, and listened. There was a lot of noise coming from the house, and then, like a stampede of Buffalo, all the kids came running top speed out of the house! I was just sure that the snake must be chasing them until Jason ducked down and ran under the house. Most of the other kids followed him, but some hung back wisely.

Next, I heard another yell…this time of victory, and pretty soon Jason came out carrying a snake on the end of his machete. Now that it was dead, I approached the scene and took a picture, using the zoom so as not to get too close. Hey….I learned to let the experts deal with danger before going in as an EMT, and I think that it works in this case also!