The only good snake

Renae Brumbaugh

-- Coffee Talk --

Critters have become the theme of my life lately. And I don’t even like critters. I mean, I don’t dislike critters. But I never wanted to be a vet or a zookeeper or anything. But somehow, these little creatures of nature keep finding me and causing all kinds of havoc on my delicate constitution.

 

This week, there was a snake in the chicken house.

 

Again.

 

So far, we’re averaging one a year.

 

I called Superman at work. I didn’t comment on the size, or the fact that it had diamonds on its back. Last year, I told him there was an enormous rattler in the henhouse, and I still haven’t lived that one down. Apparently, a 14-inch-long chicken snake and a 6-foot rattlesnake aren’t even close to the same thing.

 

The man-child wanted to shoot it with his bb gun, but I wouldn’t let him without an adult present. And no, in this case, I wasn’t an adult. Nothing can transform me into a two-year-old screaming for mommy like a snake. So we shut the chicken house door and waited for the Sman.

 

Sure enough, the snake was in there, all curled up and snoozing after his late lunch. This one was, in Superman’s words, “as big as they get.”

 

Yeah.

 

As you know, in my way of thinking, the only good snake is a dead snake. And for those of you who don’t like the idea of killing snakes, please understand that as long as they stay far away from my eggs, and from me, I live and let live. But once they get in the henhouse, they’ll keep coming back for me, I mean for more.

 

I’ll spare you the details of the actual exorcism. Let’s just say that by the time the man-child and the S-man were done, that snake wasn’t coming back.

 

Or so we thought.

 

The next morning, as I returned home from taking man-child to school, I noticed a long, striped, scaly thing lying very still in my yard. And sitting over the long, striped, scaly thing, wagging her tail like she’d just unearthed a great and rare treasure, was Ginger, my dog.

 

She brought me a gift.

 

So very thoughtful.

 

I tiptoed close enough to make sure the thing was still good and dead.

 

It was.

 

Then I ran in my house, locked all the doors, closed all the blinds, and curled up in a fetal position until Superman got home.

 

Well, I might have watched a show on Netflix, and checked Facebook during that time. But trust me. I was traumatized.

 

It’s interesting that Satan is referred to as the serpent. And like that chicken snake, he keeps coming back and back and back. He’ll stop at nothing to try to ruin us. He wants to destroy us. He wants us to live in fear.

 

But when we have God on our side, Satan is no more harmful than a dead snake. He might look scary. He might even cause our hearts to race. But He’s nothing compared to the God of all creation.