Small Snake

Several months ago a snake came into the hostel. Sarah shooed it out with a twig that was a bit short for my own comfort level. I'm not afraid of snakes, but when there are so many deadly snakes here, and I don't really know what any of them look like, I'd prefer not to take my chances with any of them.

Today Sarah screamed when she entered the house, and explained that she had almost stepped on a snake. So we all went to look and there was a small black snake, no thicker than a pencil and shorter than a foot, in the front yard. It was acting all big and moving its head agressively. We contemplated what to do. I recalled that after we shooed the snake out last time we never heard the end of it when a neighbor got bit several weeks later; even though the guy didn't die and I'm sure it wasn't the same snake. Anyway, the point is that we had been clearly advised that it's culturally accepted (or expected) that snakes be killed. So we put the same trashcan we used on the scorpian over it, but he crawled through one of the millions of holes. We thought about leaving him, but he crawled toward the house. We agreed that we should just kill him, but the only thing we had were butter knives and my swiss army knife (which we needed to cut our watermelon in the afternoon). Eventually I found a hoe; making it my job to take care of the snake. I scooted him out from the grass where he was hiding and chopped him in half.

It was really sad. I know it's just a little snake. When I scooted him out from the grass he was just calm and harmless looking. He must have cooled off from almost being stepped on. It just didn't seem right to kill something that had done nothing to me. I know I did what was supposed to be done, but it was still sort of evil feeling.