Yikes! Snake!

Hello!

(FYI, I dated this for the morning it happened instead of for when I am writing it.)

Life is certainly interesting here in Turkana. I woke up this morning and stepped out of my bedroom door to find a dead snake in the hallway. My cat - Chewy - short for Chushanrishathaim (look it up in the Bible) - managed to kill the said snake sometime the night before. I heard him making noise in the hall around 10 pm Thursday night. When I went out to check and found the rug outside the door was all in a bunch. I stepped over it and proceeded to check on the cat. He seemed fine and wasn't in any way following anything - but he was laying in the hall. So, I again stepped over the rug and went back into my bedroom and went to bed.

The next morning the rug was still messed up. Just a few inches away was the remains of a snake. I admit that I stopped and stared in shock for a little bit before I proceeded to think - chewy! I spent about 10 minutes trying to locate him fearing that he had been bitten and crawled off to some hidden place to lick his wounds or die. I must say that my imagination was running away with me at that point and I was really quite anxious for my kitty! Thankfully I found him sleeping and he didn't appear to have been hurt. He just looked at me like he was thinking -"why did you wake me up I was having such a nice dream!"

A little later, after I made a lot of Chewy and praised him for his fine warrior kitty abilities, I went and examined the remains of the snake. It was in two pieces. Maybe cats have heard you need to separate the head from the body too - who knows. I think one of the smaller pieces was the head, but it was all mangled so I couldn't really tell. I was a biology major in college and found it quite interesting (only because I knew it was dead and couldn't hurt me!). Anyway, I swept it all up into my dustpan and took it outside to show my guard. He proceeded to tell me that it was an "areal" (are-ray-al - like short for Albert). Translated that is a puff adder - a very poisonous snake.

So, I experienced the creeps at the sight of a dead snake in my house, anxiety for my cat who had killed it and then praises for God's protection all in the space of a few minutes after waking up. Life isn't always so interesting here. I must say I am glad about that!

So, how was your day???