The REALLY BIG snake in my house
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 10/Nov/2010 07:45, 34 days ago
The scene of entry!One Monday morning I was going outside into my courtyard to brush my hair when I saw a large snake, about two feet long, hissing and wriggling just inside my closed door. I grew up on the stories of Babar the elephant and thePoisonwood Bible. I know about African snakes and what they can do.I retreat as calmly as possible, grab my mobile phone in case the snake corners me and I have to climb onto the bed and call for help, and go to my bedroom to put on jeans, socks and shoes to make sure all my bare flesh is covered. When I go back to the hallway the snake has gone.I don’t want to leave the house by the back door to go and get help; for all I know the snake has wriggled back under the door and is waiting for me just outside. There’s another door to the house which opens out of the Sultan’s reception room, but to get there I’d have to cross the hallway whereI’d last seen the snake, which is full of curtains and rolled up carpets. I decide my best option is to go the window and scream for help.Normally at this time in the morning the compound is empty and everyone is at school, in the fields, or sitting under a tree somewhere in the village, but I have a stroke of luck. Ezekiel, one of the boys who lives in the compound, should be at the lycee but is playing truant.  “Ezekiel,” I yell, as loudly as possible, “You have to help me. There’s a giant snake in my house and it’s disappeared.” Ezekiel sauntered over to the window. Unfortunately, probably because I was talking very fast, he had mistaken the French wordserpentfor the wordchapeau, meaning hat.“Hi Mischa,” he says, “did you say your hat has disappeared? Do you think you left it in the other house last night? I can go and check if you want.”“No. Don’t leave! I didn’t saychapeau, I saidserpent, and it’s really big and it’s in the house but I don’t know where.”“Don’t worry so much about your hat. Do you want me to come in and help you look for it?”“NO! Don’t go near the back door. There’s a giant snake.”Ezekiel, who has got it firmly into his head that I’ve lost my hat, looks confused.I start hissing and pretending to be a snake to try and get the message across.Finally, he gets it.“Ahhh! There’s asnakein your house!”Ezekiel with the dead snakeHe goes away and comes back with a huge stick, and then enters the house through the door to the Sultan’s reception room. The snake has moved over to this door and he almost steps on it as he comes in. Ezekiel stops at the doorway, and because it is forbidden to step on the Sultan’s carpets with shoes on,takes his shoes offand leaves them on the porch before coming in to fight the snake.Ezekiel, much braver than me, whacks the snake with his stick until it is dead. He takes the twitching corpse outside and throws it into the bushes whilst all the neighbourhood children gather round to admire it.We then go and find the snake tracks in the sand, leading from a hole in the concession wall to my door, and put down anti-snake protective leaves all over the house and the path to the door. Unfortunately these leaves were long, green, and shiny and I would jump every time I saw one for the next three days, thinking it was another snake.Later that day Ahmed, one of the Sultan’s sons, comes round to check I’m not too traumatised. He was bitten by a poisonous snake in Mali last year, when it hid in his shoe. We have been having a lot of arguments about my vegetarianism, and he is quite smug that I’ve been caught out in such a blatant act of animal cruelty. “I can’t believe you murdered that innocent snake,” he says.