Snikes, a Summer Rerun

Not all guests are welcome at Charlie’s house

One Sunday, during my life in Zimbabwe, I decided to drop in on my friend C.R., who lived about 10 kilometers west of where we lived. He owned a dairy farm and lived in a thatched roof home his family built in the 1930’s. A couple of tame warthogs were grazing in his yard when I drove up and they trotted over to sniff my pants like friendly dogs. I liked them and dreamed of taking one back to Idaho where I would let it ride in the back of my truck, happy tusks in the wind, and someday, enter it in ugly dog contests. Alas, the bureaucracy killed that dream, but I still admire their courage to be so unapologetically ugly. Perhaps now, with changing attitudes toward service animals, I could declare one as an emotional support animal and take it with me on flights, but they are kind of heavy to lap ride on a long haul.

I knocked on the screen door, and C.R. hollered that he was in the lounge watching a rugby match. I made myself comfortable on the worn sofa and tried to watch the game on his tiny black and white t.v. Then something caught my eye. Across from where I sat, part of a snake was hanging from a broken vent block near the ceiling. Vent blocks are spaced along the top of walls to allow air to circulate in a room to control dampness. Because the blocks are made from plaster, they are prone to break. The snake somehow found the broken block and decided to investigate it.

Behind the lower end of the dangling partial snake was a large patch of damaged plaster. I looked over at C.R. and saw a hand gun on a table next to his easy chair. Now caught up into the forensics of the situation, I scanned the room for the snake’s business end. On a low table below the mess were stacks of The Farmer magazines dusted with broken plaster, and the head and a foot or so of a banded / snouted cobra that laid there stone cold dead.

I looked over again at C.R. and pointed at the carnage. He grinned, shrugged, and went back to the 13” rugby match. I need to investigate further, so I went outside and walked to the side of the house where the snake made its last bad life choice. At least three feet of the snake dangled against the wall of the house. I went back to the lounge where C.R. was still engrossed in rugby but I didn’t stay long. I have a limited attention span when it comes to dead snakes hanging on lounge walls, but I always wondered how long it dangled there before he removed it. Clearly, he had little tolerance for living cobras in his house, but maybe dead ones were a different story, like some kind of a trophy or conversation piece. Definitely a conversation piece.