Perfect Timing

I hardly ever sit on my couch in the evening.  I’m usually the one that falls asleep with the kids in their bedroom while I’m putting them to bed.  Lame, I know, but still.  

It had been a busy day at the hospital.  I was trying to straighten up in the house because we had visitors coming in 2 days.  Instead of cleaning, I sat on the couch and made a list, so as to not forget things like clean the toilet and move old hospital beds to another location.  Procrastination, but still important because I was tired.  

Olen was in the kids’ bedroom putting them to sleep.  

If you were to come inside our house, you would enter the front porch first.  Then enter through the front door which opens directly into our living room.  All of our bedrooms have doors off of the living room.  It’s very open, yet the kids are not very far from us if they need anything.  So if you were to go to the kids’ room, you would have to walk across the living room to get into their room.  They are all three sleeping together in one room for the time being.  

So as I was saying, I was minding my own business, writing out my list, siting on a small couch right next to the door.  

SCREAM!!!!!!! (that would be me screaming!)  I noticed a tiny little snake slithering quite rapidly across the cement floor towards the rug in the middle of the room towards the kids’ bedroom.  

“Olen get out here!” I screamed again.  

I REALLY hate snakes, as those of you who hate snakes can relate with me.  It makes me cringe and want to ball up and not do anything all at the same time.  Yet, I never thought of myself as wimpy.  I don’t mind mice, spiders, most other animals, dirt, blood, poop, etc…….But SNAKES!  I LOATHE!  

Olen came sleepily out of the kids’ room into the living room.  Zane tried to come out and wondered why mommy was screaming.  

“Oh, it’s nothing Zane, go back to sleep, honey,” I lied.

I couldn’t help but let out small screams and high pitches of fear as I watched this snake seem like it was going to go under the rug or slither across into my kids‘ bedroom!  

Again, I had to cover and tell Lyol and Zane that mommy was just surprised and that it was nothing.  Go to sleep!

“Dear, kill it!”  Get it, don’t let it get away!” I told Olen.

Olen bravely grab 2 My Bible Friend books, stacked them, and held them over the snake that kept slipping on the cement, not making much headway.  It was only a little baby snake from the looks of it!  

Olen held the books up high and let gravity take it’s effect.  Down came the books and smashed the snake.  He carefully lifted the books and thankfully had killed the snake on the first try.  My hero!  

Now came the scary part.    

The scary part was thinking about how this little snake got into my living room!!!  The more I thought about it, the more my skin crawled.  We put the dead little 10cm long and less than 1cm wide snake in a cup and took a picture of it.  We put it on facebook.  

Friends wrote back.  Answer: Dangerous viper, the kind that makes you bleed out from all of your orifices.  

So now I really started to freak out!  I made Olen go talk to the boys on the compound, Appo and Papa to ask them what they thought.  Same response!  That snake was no good!  

Normally I walk barefoot in my house.  There’s not much light at night in the house usually, but I’ve never really thought about that.  But not now!  Every step I took that night, I kept wondering if I was going to step on a creepy, dangerous snake!  

Olen and I searched for a while for more snakes, or perhaps a mama snake that just spawned her nasty children.  We found nothing.  So finally we went to bed, prayed for protection for us and our children, and left the rest in God’s hands.  

I finally got to sleep, but got called into a postpartum hemorrhage around 1am.  I brought the picture on my phone to show some of the locals at the hospital.  

The mother of my patient got the worst look on her face when I showed her the picture.  “That is not a good snake.  Where was it?”

“In my house!”  

More of the same from all of the other people who saw the photo. 

I went home more creeped out by snakes than ever.  Somehow I still had a sense of peace as I crawled into bed thinking of snakes slithering across my floor.  

I knew that God had put me on that couch at that exact time so that I would see that nasty snake before it got to the kids’ bedroom.  And we are thankful for His protection!