call me snake killer...

because i have just killed a snake. i'm still a little freaked out but i chopped the thing in half with my machete. the news is already spreading through the village.

so we were eating lunch and i was just spacing out when all of a sudden, mamasou starts yelling her head off and she's pointing at something behind her mother's head. there's a long yellow snake slithering down the post behind aram and everybody starts running and screaming and the thing freak out too and darts for a hole in the wall of aram's hut.

i doubt the thing is poisonous but there is pure terror in the air and that is the snake's death sentence. i go get my machete and aram runs to boil water to drown out the snake. the whole time i'm waiting for the water to boil, i am nervous. i don't think i've ever killed anything larger than a scorpion or a big bug and even doing that makes me a little nervous. the water is ready and we get ready.

aram throws the water into the hole and out comes the snake and everybody is yelling and screaming and i guess the adrenaline kicks in and i start hacking away. i miss the first and second swings, but by the third swing, i've hit the snake and by swing number five or six, i've chopped the thing in half. the head half makes a bolt for my hut and tries to climb up my hut's wall (spreading blood as it goes) and i figure it has to die eventually (right?) but aram goes after it with the vengeance of a really pissed off momma bear and pummels its head in with a stick.

minutes later, it's dead (the tail end still twitching) and there's snake blood everywhere (maybe an exaggeration) and everybody just goes back to eating. i'll admit i was freaked out and had lost my appetite but because i was the snake killer, everybody was urging me to eat so i took a few more bites of ceeb without puking because all i could think about was chopping up a snake. apparently i am a "jambar" (loosely translated as "champion") now because of this incident and perhaps i have gained some respect.

the head

the tail

*note - i showed paul these pictures and he says its a baby boa. not poisonous but it would have grown up and strangled my cat or the kids or a donkey or something, so my killing has been justified.