Eve Is Avenged

It all started with a glance out the kitchen window and a thought in the back of my head, "Hmm, is there something in the grass?  Could it be a snake?"

With a sheepish grin, I now admit that the above scenario happens for me roughly every five minutes during the warm months when snakes might be around.  ;-)  I am forever thinking that I see a snake, and then it turns out to be a stick...or a part of a shingle that was blown off the roof...or a stalk of grass...or a shadow...or a nothing.  Just a figment of my imagination.  Someday, when I get inspired and have enough time, I'm going to write a blog post entitled, "We See What We Fear."  But not today...  :)

On that particular day, which happens to be this past Thursday, the date of which is June 30, 2011, just in case future historians need to know the date :), when I saw that "something" in the grass, I decided to take a closer look.  After all, I had some scraps that I needed to take out to the compost pile, so I carried them out, dumped them in, then walked behind the house to see what I could find.  "Why in the world would you do that?" you might wonder.  "Aren't you afraid of snakes?"  

Well, yes, I most certainly am.  But if there is a snake in my backyard, the worst thing is to NOT KNOW ABOUT IT.  So I had to investigate.

I walked slowly, however.  Gingerly.  Timidly.  Didn't get too close.  Close enough to see that there was a thing in the grass.  Thought it might be a stick.  Decided it didn't look quite like a stick.  Figured it probably was a snake.  Backed off quickly.  I was wearing open-toe sandals, after all.

As I came back into the house, my mind raced faster than the speed of light as I considered the possibilities.

1. Calling Jeff?  No, he was at work; and although he came home from work to deliver me in the goat-stuck-in-the-fence situation, I was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to make it home in time to deal with the snake.

2. Calling my Old Order Mennonite neighbor Wilma?  No.  Although she killed the first snake we found around here, I thought she might laugh (lovingly, of course) if I called her to deal with another one.

3. Calling my parents?  Tempting, but I decided it was time to grow up and be a big girl and face my fears and take the bull by the horns and hit the snake with a hoe!

Next question:  where were the boys, and were they safely occupied?  Yes.  Earlier, Shav had motioned to be put up in his highchair, and he was happily playing with little cars while he watched me work in the kitchen.  He would be fine while I went outside to deal with our most unwelcome intruder.  The older three boys were downstairs watching a movie, and I didn't call them to come up because I didn't want them to get frightened (ha! they would have been much braver than I, I'm sure!)...and probably also because I didn't want an audience while I faced my enemy.

While these thoughts zoomed through my head, I ran up to my room, grabbed my tallest pair of boots, traded my sandals for them, zipped up the boots, rushed back down, grabbed the hoe we keep on the porch "for such a time as this," and returned to the backyard for the showdown.  

I wasn't entirely sure the snake would still be there, but he was; and although I contemplated going up to the garden shed to grab a longer hoe (the one in my hands was feeling AWFULLY short, right about then!), I decided that I'd better act quickly before he slithered away.  I approached my opponent, aware that the next few minutes were incredibly significant ones that would become a part of my history.  In a nutshell, either I would die of a fright-induced heart attack, or the snake would pay with his life for the crime of trespassing where he clearly wasn't wanted.  (If you think I'm being a bit over-dramatic, you might be right.  Maybe.)  :)

I was terrified.  

So, I did what the Max Lucado-created character, Webster, the Scaredy Spider, always does when he's afraid.  I started chanting, "God is with me.  God is with me.  God is with me.  God is with me."  :)

As I approached the snake, I saw for the first time that it was clearly NOT a stick.  Neither was it a figment of my imagination.  I would HAVE to deal with it.  But I couldn't quite figure out how to do it:  I knew I should try to hit the snake behind the head, but that would require GETTING CLOSE TO THE HEAD.  I didn't like that option, so I crept up behind it and tried to assess how well I could kill it if I struck it in the middle or closer to the tail.  I raised the hoe (which was feeling shorter and shorter all the time) and paused.  My voice, which had started its "God is with me" chant fairly low, raised in a crescendo of panic.  Time passed, and I realized, "I'm going to have to do it.  I can't stand here forever.  I have to hit this beast.  I have to lower the hoe as hard as I can.  I don't know what's going to happen, but I just have to do it and, as Narnian dwellers would say, 'Take the adventure that awaits us'."  OK, I wasn't thinking quite so poetically, but that's what I was feeling.

So I did it.  Down came the hoe in my clenched hands, up raised my voice in frightful plea, around came the snake's head as he felt the blow on his back...and then, once again, I raised and lowered the hoe--quickly, this time.  I caught him right behind the head, right where I wanted the hoe to be.  Now time to push as hard as I could and cut that rotten head off.

Only, I couldn't do it.

Snakes, as I've discovered, are quite rubbery; and it was like taking a kitchen knife to the tire of Jeff's Jeep to try to get that ol' snake head off with that duller-than-I-realized hoe.  I pressed as hard as I could.  I tried to saw it back and forth.  I contemplated getting the hoe under the snake and taking it to the cistern so I could have a hard surface to press against; but although the cistern was only a few steps behind me, I figured the snake would find a way to flip and flop and get himself off the hoe before I got him onto the cistern...and then what would I do?

I stood there, wondering how long it would take the snake to die from the injuries I'd given it.  My right hand still clenched the hoe tightly (by the way, my hands ached for days afterwards from the intensity of my grip on that hoe!), holding down the neck of the snake (do snakes have necks?).  My throat still brought forth the words, "God is with me."  By this time, I was crying.  I had put my left hand up to the side of my face.  And then...

...Josiah found me.

The movie had finished, and he and David and Tobin were wandering up to the kitchen.  Apparently, the commotion I was making in the backyard attracted their attention.  :)  Josiah told me later that his first thought was that the tool I was holding was an ax, and I had tried to cut down the stump in the backyard but had gotten injured, so was holding my face because of that.  :)  When he realized it was a snake, Josiah came outside and David was off like a flash to my parents' house, barging straight in without knocking and blurting out the dilemma.  Was I ever glad to see Dad's face appear around the corner of our house by the lilac bush!!  :)

I don't remember exactly what I said to him, but apparently I conveyed my request that he go up to the shed and get the pruners to cut off the snake's head, because I wanted that snake IN TWO PIECES.  That was the only way I could be sure he was dead, in my adrenaline-riddled mind; and since I couldn't seem to accomplish it with the hoe, I thought the pruners were the way to go.  Dad quickly complied and got ready to "snip."  But again, that snake was tough, and his head didn't depart completely from his body.  But it was enough.  We knew he was dead...or dying...kind of hard to tell which when they wiggle and squirm and jerk around for ever so long, even after being killed, which is very eerie to watch.

Then it was time to breathe.  And smile.  And talk about what happened, with everyone wanting to tell their perspective, their piece of the story.  And laugh.  And go inside to get the camera to take pictures.  :)  If you're as much of a wimp as I am when it comes to snakes, you might want to click away right now.

Still here?  Don't say I didn't warn you.  :)

Obviously, this is a reenactment, but the funny part about this to me is that it shows--quite accurately--how I stood as far away from the snake as I possibly could while hitting it.  :)

At this point, I did carry it over to the cistern (using the hoe, obviously...you don't think I would touch it with my bare hands, do you???), and tried to stretch it out to measure it, but it was in the spasm stage and kept writhing.  I did not like this.

My face looks just a little too cheerful here.

Josiah is like me and didn't want to have anything to do with the snake, but not David and Tobin.  When some time had passed and the snake was still, I was able to stretch it out and measure it; and they didn't hesitate to touch it.

They then smelled their hands and informed me that the snake stunk.  "It smells like poop!" they chortled.  Lovely.

The snake was clearly longer than a yardstick, and my best measurement of it was 43 inches.  That's the longest we've had.  I don't like this trend:  a snake every year, and they keep getting longer.  :(

However, being my usually optimistic self, I'll make the choice to look on the bright side and assume that, since we already had a snake encounter this year, the rest of 2011 will be snake-free.  Right?  Oh, please?  Say it will be so?  :)

On a more serious note (not that writing about killing a snake is exactly light and frivolous!), I was remembering what I wrote after last year's Snake Encounter about fear:  how irrational my fear of snakes is, and the spiritual overtones that it has.  I suppose that some people might be able to see a snake, identify it as a non-poisonous one, then shoo it away so it could go off and catch mice or something.  But even though I can so very easily do that with a bee or spider or other creepy-crawlie or mouse or other critters that some people fear, I simply cannot bring myself to do that with a snake.  In my mind, for whatever reason, the contest with a snake is still a battle between good and evil.  Why is that?

Regardless, this event was a HUGE victory for me.  Maybe it wasn't truly an epic battle between good and evil.  :)  But without a doubt, it was the victory of courage over fear, trust in a powerful God over reliance on my helpless self.  For me to be able to look in the eye of the thing I feared most in the world and conquer it...well, like I said, it was HUGE.  My hope and prayer is that the bravery God gave me in that situation will bleed over--in the most beautiful way--into all corners of my life...and that the lesson I learned that "with God, all things are possible" will strengthen me for other hurdles that may come my way.  Maybe even another snake, if I must face this fear again.  :)

Later that evening, a friend of ours, Rick, came over for a Bible study; and when the boys excitedly dragged him around to the back of the house to see the snake and hear about the afternoon's adventures, he looked at the snake and remarked casually, "Oh, yeah, that's just a black snake."  For the tiniest fraction of an instant, I felt a pang of remorse. I know in my head that black snakes are harmless.  I know in my head that some people like them.  I know in my head that some people actually appreciate the help of snakes in keeping down the rodent population.   But I also know that, in my head, a snake is a snake is a snake.  And until I can figure out how to speak Snake-ese and politely direct any intruding snakes to leave our property at once, I'll just have to deal with them another way.  

With a hoe in my hands...

...and someone with the pruners for back-up...

...and a refrain of "GOD IS WITH ME" on my lips!  :)