…also known as “One More Reason to Hate my Latrine”.
I woke up the other morning and went outside to use my latrine. (The Peace Corps is kind of like camping for two years, but with less beer and more work. So awesome.) On the floor of my latrine was a snake, blissfully napping with reckless regard for my bladder’s needs. I was impressively calm, if I do say so myself. I shut the door and went to get my neighbor. Because I am not a snake charmer. In two years, I’ve learned to deal with rats, bats, scorpions, tarantulas, and bugs the size of baseballs with dignity and humility. Alright fine, not with humility. Or dignity. But I have learned to deal with them. But I DON’T. DO. SNAKES. I have to draw the line somewhere. And that line falls right in front of slithery, scaled creatures that may or may not be poisonous.
My neighbor’s 18-year-old son came over with a three-foot stick. (Isn’t there some proverb about poking a sleeping snake? Or is that bear?) He found the snake, which had curled up in the very back of the latrine. Thank God it wasn’t there to begin with, or I might not have noticed until my bare, gringa butt was dangling over it. He coaxed it on to the end of the stick and pulled it out. After chasing his sister with it a bit, he yelled to his Mom, “Hey, I think it’s the baby of the other one!”
Pardon?
I went over and interrogated his mother, and it went something like this:
“Oh, didn’t we tell you? I could’ve sworn we told you… We found a big snake a few days ago, but before we could kill it, it slithered into the forest near your latrine.”
?#@%^@!!!!!
It took me a couple hours to work up the courage to go back into my latrine. And now I’m in a constant state of worry every moment that a wrathful, vengence-seeking mama snake is going to drop down onto my head from the rafters and take revenge on my for killing her child!
My neighbor’s last, comforting parting shot to me was, “Don’t worry, snakes eat rats. So you’ll have less in your house now.” Which I think is kind of comparable to telling someone that their recently acquired case of chlamydia will make their herpes much less noticeable.
Sorry, that was crude. But apropos.
