Snake Hunting

I am beginning to think that I should just look at run-ins with snakes as part of life here. Sun had just finished some language study and left her notebook and MP3 player on the desk in our office/guest room while I finished bringing some laundry in from outside. Leaving the reading lamp on the desk turned on, Sun and Joshua went across the street to the community center where there are some exercise machines and neighbors to talk to. I went into the office to finally do some reading for language study and catch up on email. Walking up to the desk, I jumped back in fright at the sight of a snake sunning itself under our reading lamp. The snake then quickly slithered off with a start, likely just as surprised as I was.

I was not happy. The long thin dark green snake hid itself behind the desk unit in the corner. For the next half an hour or so, I tore apart the office in a cat-and-mouse search for the snake. As soon as I found him, he was off again to a new hiding place. I thought I had him once when the little end of his tail was sticking out from under the headboard of the bed (I had removed the mattress and boards on top of the frame). I pinned down his tail with my machete, hoping to pull him backwards under the headboard, hopefully crushing him in the process. It wasn't to be. I severed part of his tail, causing him to bleed but he yanked himself free and was off again. I finally located him curled up in a zig-zag fashion against the wall behind a filing cabinet. I carefully pulled the cabinet out and slammed it against the wall, hoping to crush him. I didn't succeed in crushing him but I cut off his escape route to the left. He jagged right under Sun's sewing table where he met his doom. The snake and I went back and forth for a few minutes as I pushed aside a trash can and electrical wires in order to get a better shot at the snake. Finally, I had a good angle and pinned down his head with the end of my machete. The snake was really upset now and tried desperately to get away as I sawed off its head with my dull machete and screamed, "Die! Die! Die!". Screaming at the snake didn't really serve any other purpose other than it felt really good to say it after my long hunt for this vile intruder.

With the floor under the sewing table smeared with snake blood, I scooped up the severed snake head and took it out on the front porch where Sun & Joshua were sitting close to the house, sheltering themselves from the driving rainstorm which had begun not long after my battle with the snake. I went back and got the body and tossed it out in front of the porch where the body continued to slither for quite sometime. It was rather amazing, really. The following video was taken about ten minutes or so after I had beheaded the snake.

I don't know when it stopped moving as I threw the body into the flower bed and went back inside to clean up the mess. There was lots of blood under the sewing table and then drops of blood along the floor between the office and the front door where I carried out the snake. Dinner time was upon us and as I put the office back together, Sun reminded me that I had not yet given them the all-clear signal to come back in the house. Realizing my oversight, Sun and Joshua came back in and we sat down to dinner, albeit a bit late.

I did a bit of research on this website and think that it was a Golden Tree Snake, which is technically part of the viper family but whose venom is so mild that it doesn't have much of an effect on humans. All the same, finding a snake in your house is a bit of a tense experience because I have yet to have a snake encounter where I had the leisure of looking up the snake on the internet before needing to hunt it down with some long sharp implement.