Evil Incarnate

We had a rainy-season precursory visit the other day… while sitting in our backyard, a snake popped up onto the cement portion of our wall. We didn’t see it, but Samson did. As he shot over to the wall, I looked up to see it there – about 3 feet long, very slender and bright green. "The Boy" (Samson) whacked at it a couple of times as I shouted “No!” to get him away from it in case it was poisonous. But the snake realized it wasn’t interested in eating us (Tammy’s sure that’s what it was coming to do : ), and left quickly. Apparently, green snakes are non-poisonous here, it’s the brown and black ones that are of concern. Like the vipers and spitting cobras that apparently hang out around here! That’s what we’re being told, but we’re not buying the ‘green-means-go’ theory quite yet. We’ve heard a few over-generalizations already and this sure sounds like one to our snake-cautious ears.


That said, we just found out tonight that we’re neighbors with what the locals consider to be a fairly big black snake. Yup. He’s been seen coming and going from the termite mound that’s behind the house next to us, about 20 yards away.

Taken from the door to our yard, the offending termite hill is at the base of the tree...
a little close for comfort!

Here's a close-up of the mound, local children eagerly clamouring to get in the picture
The 'entry' hole is to the left of the little girl's head. See closer-up photo below, if you dare!

There seems to be no question that black means poisonous, anyway. I was busy pouring a bit of snake repellent (called "grezyl" - liquid that smells like moth-balls) on our wall when I was asked by a neighbor to pour some down this snake's alleged entry hole. Incredulous, I asked if this wouldn’t provoke the snake to leave it’s hole and then, finding me standing there like a not-so-smart guy with my bottle of grezyl… well, I tried to quell my imagination there.

“No”, I was bluntly told, “it won’t come out and eat you.” So I poured on the grezyl, my legs wound up like springs should the need-to-flee arise. I put about ¼ cup around the hole’s opening and thought that should be plenty. I walked back to our wall, keeping an eye over my shoulder… No sign of ‘im. We'll tell you if we ever see him, assuming we live to talk about it.

Evil lies within? I still don't like looking too hard at this picture in case my mind starts to see the serpentine outline of a head.

And the capper... this is a shot of the lane leading from our house to the Dispensaire... pleasantly lined with snake-infested termite hills. Who needs coffee for a morning jolt when you can walk down death alley? We're saving up to buy a whole case of grezyl!!!