Close encounters with a snake

May 6, 2008 - 12:54 PM by

I don’t know why people think living in the country is so healthy.
This morning as I was out for a bit of exercise around the village perimeter, a large snake suddenly slithered across the road just in front of me.

I often see animals when I’m out walking – porcupines, deer, wild pigs (at a distance luckily), but this is the first time I’ve encountered a snake. And so near. My heart almost stopped beating and I found myself clutching my chest.

I made it home in record time, and phoned a friend.
“What color was it?” he asked.
“Brown.”
“With patterns?”
“Uh, huh.”
“Diamond type patterns?”
“yeh, kind of like that.”
“Was it big?”
“About a meter and a half. And fat too…”

“It was probably a sepher,” he said casually. “It’s Israel’s most dangerous snake. Wow, if it’d bitten you, and your heart was beating hard from exercise, you’d be dead in minutes.”

A few years back we were doing some repairs to our house, and a couple of workmen dug a hole near one of the windows. Suddenly a snake appeared out of the hole, slithered across the arms and chest of one of the builders and made for the gate. In one smooth movement, my husband grabbed a spade and cut off it’s head.

Later one of our neighbors told him off. “It was a black snake,” he said. “If you’ve got a black snake in the garden then you won’t get a sepher.”
“What and the black snake doesn’t bite?”
“No it does bite and you’ll get really sick, but you won’t get as sick as if you get bitten by a sepher.”

In these here parts, everyone’s got a snake story, or failing that a scorpion one, or a tale about some other close encounter with a poisonous beastie. Makes you long for city living… where a cockroach is the worst you’ll find to make you scream.

Tags: • Category: General, Life 

Comments

4 Comments on Close encounters with a snake

  1. Rafi G on Tue, May 6th 2008 1:18 PM

    2. I always say exercise is not healthy. This is why I avoid it.

  2. Ishai Sagi on Wed, May 7th 2008 11:12 AM

    3. hah!
    try living in Australia…talk about snakes…

  3. ralph a. kern on Mon, May 12th 2008 8:33 PM

    4. Shalom;
    there was an article in a texas paper a while ago, where a lumber worker killed a timber rattlesnake 10 and a half ft. long, and weighed 112#. and before I retired, the inmates at the prison where I worked killed a 12# cottonmouth 2+1/2 ft. long. I would rather run into the rattler than the cottonmouth anyday. Hashem bless…

  4. jimmy on Thu, Jun 11th 2009 11:35 AM

    5. It could have been worse imagine living somewhere that had Anacondas :p

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