An Uninvited Guest

Living in Malaysia sure does provide some eccentric episodes to our lives.  But eccentric can sometimes even turn into dangerous (my life is sort of like an Asian Western movie:  John Wayne meets Bruce Lee!  okay, not really, but I like that metaphor).  And recently it came down to the life of a snake versus the lives of my children:  no contest.

(My husband would say I was being melodramatic of course, and no one was really in any danger.)

In my ignorance (supposedly), we killed a Boa Constrictor last night.  Yes, the boa constrictor had gotten into our house.  We got home from our week’s vacation in the Philippines to have our amah announce that she hadn’t slept a wink for two nights after a BOA CONSTRICTOR had crept across her chest as she lay sleeping in the middle of the night.  Holy Terror. 

Not much scares me more than snakes.  The worst tragedy was that she didn’t know where it had disappeared to, and we thought it could still be in the house.  

And if something seems a threat to my children, I rise up into the largest shape I can possibly turn into (metaphorically speaking, of course), and I scare the daylights out of it.  No one or nothing will harm my children if I can possibly help it! 

Of course, was I the brave soul who took the life of this poor creature?  Of course not!  Blood is creepy and disgusting, and I am against violence.  Our guard from the neighborhood had the dubious challenge of either throwing him into the ditch or of smashing the snake so he wasn’t a threat to my sweet children.

There he was (some people would say beautiful in his embroidered tapestry of brown and black, but sorry, I’m not one of them), as it coiled up against the wall outside the back door, with its caught prey in its tightly constricted loins.  A RAT, the rat that we’d been trying to catch for weeks now, lay sprawled in its grasp.  I will not post a picture because it is just too disturbing for words to see a snake (about five feet long, not huge but not small) coiled around its very last meal.

And the brave young guard of probably 22 years of age killed him with a large

 2 X 4!  I didn’t watch the scenario, or I would have had nightmares for weeks, but I was standing within earshot and my husband said the snake reared its ugly head and hissed as it realized its life, and probably more importantly, its dinner were threatened.

Sad some might say, or just disturbing, but at least we hit two birds with one stone (well, three birds, actually).  Rat:  DEAD.  Snake:  DEAD.  Children:  ALIVE.  Sounds like a win to me.