Click Your Fingers

This is why blogs should be completed the day they are thought of, and they should not span multiple days unless that is the point of the exercise.

Yesterday night I was making notes on what I was going to say about that day, but as it was late at night I planned on completing it in the morning. It still has not been finished. This is because today, as opposed to yesterday where I was professing how everything is good, normal and satisfactorily sorted – was pretty scary.

Our dog, my mother’s and mine, almost got bitten by a snake today. I went out into the yard and the dog started barking, like she usually does when she sees one of the cats with a bird or hears a car, a whole number of things. And she was sniffing around the hot water service and running around. So I thought there might be a mouse or rabbit about. So I let the dog into the front yard, and she ran up the drive barking and sniffing around, then she came back to near where I was standing (I’m talking two feet away) and unearthed a three and a half foot brown snake. And I don’t mean that the snake simply was brown; I mean that this was an Australian Western Brown Snake. Google it, it’s not nice. So there is the dog and myself, both perilously close to this highly venomous snake, the dog is poking its head at the snake with its ears back and I am on the other side of the snake screaming at the dog to get out of the way, but she doesn’t move as she is probably paralysed with fear or interest or because I am screaming. So I throw this pale yellow teacup at her, I was holding it because I was catching flies to feed to my carnivorous water beetle (don’t ask), and I don’t think that the cup hit her but it discouraged her enough so she backed off when I screamed again, and the snake slid off into the trees. So I took the dog into the house and called my mother who was at work. I then spent the next hour and a half checking for the signs that would indicate that she had been bitten. And she is completely fine. But what a scare, honestly, I almost feel like it was me who nearly got bitten and nearly died. I hate to repeat the cliché but it really does show how fleeting and precious life is. That could have been me, that could have been anyone. One bite from the snake, and on this dreary, cold, otherwise uneventful day – it could have all been over. Just think, even though the whole thing was probably my fault; the fact that I had that teacup, or that I thought to throw it, possibly saved her life. I can see it outside my bedroom window right now.

Everything I have said before seems so trivial now. It does put a whole lot of things in perspective. I’m just glad everyone’s OK.

☆Anika☆