What did you do today?

Tonight I was reading in the living room, I brought down my little battery powered alarm clock so I knew what time it was. The plan was to go to dinner with the Kellys, Thelanders and Paul and Meladee. 

We went to the Restauraunt and it was a fun time.

After coming home I didn't do anything in particular.

It was a fine and dandy, perfectly normal evening.

After calling home I was getting ready to go to bed and was about to go to sleep when I remembered my alarm clock was in the living room.

So I got up and walked down the little hall when I got to the three steps down into the living room, I naturally scanned for snakes on the stairs.

This is natural because once you find one snake in your house you're always looking out for more.

There wasn't anything on the steps and we had the christmas lights on so I could see well enough and didn't bother with the light.

I proceeded down the steps and headed towards the table with my clock--for some reason I went a little further left than necessary (probably to avoid being to close to furniture which could harbor lurking creatures like spiders or snakes or mice or tarantulas) and I kept scanning for snakes, which I remember thinking, "you never see anything, and you already looked around, why are you worried now?" but somewhere in there a think black line started quickly slithering away on the bamboo mat I was stepping on just a foot or so away from me. I stared at it as it rapidly slid towards the tv table. I squeeled and quickly pondered what to do while I sprinted to the stairs to flip on the light and then ran for the machete. My fear of the cockroaches in the cabinet where the machete was made me hesitate for just a second as I then decided a snake was worse than cockroaches and flung open the cabinet. I grabbed the machete (but not without a quick glance for the offensive bugs on it) and dashed to few feet back towards the tv stand. The problem was that the snake was moving and heading in the general direction of the book case where he could easily hide. Determined to not lose him I had to decide between stopping him with the machete or getting help. As Lisa had already not noticed my squeel or the banging cabinet I figured help might take too long and the snake might get away. So using the near-by rocking chair as a shield (at least mr. late-night visitor could'nt directly lunge at and bite me!) I positioned the machete just below his head and struck. He was little and the blow was accurate enough that was in two pieces before I almost realised what I was doing. I gave him another little cut because it seemed like everyone normally hacks the critters to pieces, but I figured with his head off their would be no problems. I watched the blood trickle out over the floor and the gravity of what just happened started to sink in.

As I stared at the glassy smothe body I took note that he was not the same as our African tree cobra. He wasn't black. He didn't have a yellow belly. Instead he was a cool steel Grey with a milky belly. Ice ran through my veins as I realised that if I had stepped a few inches further to the right I would have stepped on a baby black mamba and could have potentially been dying on my floor at that minute.  

At about this time Mr. Mamba decided to start squirming. At first I tried to convince myself that it was just twitching of his lifeless body. But as I watched him for the next few minutes, both pieces  continued wriggling on the ground while his significantly abbreviated head and upper body repeatedly opened it's mouth revealing the tell-tale black mouth for which the creature is named. I realised that he wasn't dead, he was slowly dying and showing all the bravado he could muster in his last minutes encouraging me that he would gladly introduce his fangs and deadly venom if I would only be so kind as to stick my finger close enough to his rather un-mobile head.

I may not be the cleverest person around, but I obliging that apparent desire of the snakes seemed like a stupid idea. So instead, I ran and got my camera and tried to get a good picture and video of the snake. Unfortunately my camera didn't feel like focusing and my footage makes big foot pictures look as detailed as a Van Eyck painting . 

Nonetheless, I have to share. Unfortuneatly my commentary on the video is a bit to quiet to hear, but my poor traumatized brain decided to share something along the lines of, "Here's the black mamba I just found and killed with the machete. He's still alive. I could be dead right now. See now he's opening he's showing us his black mouth from which he derived his name..."  You have to see it to realise how funy it is.

Here's the photo:

I am so thankful to God that he showed me the snake so it's not still slithering around our house and that I was able to kill it without any problems!

I couldn't really sleep after that so I called mom again. Poor mom. She answered the phone and I blurted out: "I just killed a black mamba in my living room." That's exactly what a mother wants to here her daughter say. She did well I think. But I do believe I freaked her out a bit. Then I stayed up till 3. Once I did go to sleep I dreamt I was bitten by a 6ft long African tree cobra and got his fang stuck in my hand and I found at least another 3 snakes in our house who I kept trying to kill with a machete. It didn't go so well as in real life...I was certainly happy to wake up and find that I was dying from a snake bite, but the four and a half hours of sleep I'm working on today is going to catch up to me later I think...

Tune in next time for hopefully a little bit more boring! (Although I do feel sorta proud of being able to say I've killed a deadly snake with a machete all on my own, even if it was sorta tiny...)

Love,

Jessica