Snakes!

Nhlanhla, our guard/gardener found two "baby" snakes the other day in our back yard. He dutifully killed them, saved them to show us, then got rid of them.

Needless to say, Levi (5) and Kayla (8), who were visiting at the time, were thrilled to see them. Dead or not, Levi drooled. He was very excited that there had been snakes in my backyard.

Later on, same day, but after 9pm, we returned home to the news that Victor, the night guard, had unsuccessufllly tried to kill the mamma snake. about 4 feet long. hmmmmm.

I wonder if she's missing two of her children...

I got into my "First Field Guide to Snakes & Other Reptiles of Southern Africa" book and began to look up info about our snake.

It's a molesnake. No harmful venom. It is a constrictor. No worries.

No worries? It's a SNAKE.

Dave says all snakes are poisonous. But the book says farmers appreciate the mole snake. It is very helpful to get rid of little mole critters. Squeezes the life from them, and eats 'em up, then moves into the burrow. Not too bad for the snake--Bed and Breakfast in one swift move. Although we do appreicate the mole-termination, we just don't care for this kind of terminator to hang around and raise a family!

Couldn't she just eat the mole and move on to the next yard?

One more thing the books says about the snake...it's bad tempered. It will bite if messed with. Venom or no venom, I don't want to be bitten by a snake.

So I hope between Nhlanhla and Victor, they'll get rid of the thing!

It's never been boring on the missionfield.

Y'all come!

Ewwwwwww

Dave and I had just arrived with Kayla, Levi, and Trinity at the Rodgers house. There was a beautiful rainbow in the sky that framed the house and we were all thrilled to see it...

Then suddenly we saw it. Sitting there on the veranda, basking in the sunlight on one of the tiles.

It was enough to make us forget the lovely display in the afternoon sky.



SPIDER! HUGE! Ewwwwwww



It took all my authority-voice to get the kids to go in the house and not stand over the thing to inspect it. I don't think I spoke more than 3 or 4 octaves higher than normal.



Once inside, they stood at the sliding glass doors (closed, thank you) to watch the grand execution.


Joyce, the housegirl, grabbed her weapon and proceeded to anoint the thing with deadly "sunblock."

He'd never see the sun again after this...blocked forever from him...

After his little dance of death (really weird), he rolled up into a tight little ball.



Dead.

Or at least we THOUGHT he was dead.

Would Raid fail?

When we were ready to leave the house, we thought it would be cool to hover over the critter and lament his untimely demise.

But he wasn't there. Ooooooo. Had Raid indeed failed?

Then we spied him, over there, in the corner. He had managed to give us a final shivver of curious dread with his last effort to move into a quiet spot to die.

This time he was very dead. Finished.

Ah, the non-boring life of the humble missionary. (Come see us!)

p.s. Extensive internet research reveals that it is a banana spider, non-aggressive, non-poisionous.
yeah, right. just a cute little fuzzy...