Snake Encounter!

Yesterday karis and i went swimming at our friends Beth and Jeremy's house. Beth is currently in the UK and Jeremy was at work but their two lovely daughters Claire (8) and Brianna (7) were home as well as a friend who is staying with the family, Kate. So we had a nice swim and then Karis and I went to the bathroom to change. I walked in, put Karis down, dropped my bag and closed the door all sort in one movement and then looked up to see a large green snake in the shower about 6-8 feet in front of us! It was a littler surreal, I grabbed Karis but she of course was already walking away from me - toward the snake (though I don't think she really saw it but was just stepping away after I put her down) so I had to grab for her twice then had to turn my back to open the door which of course stuck the first time!! Thankfully, the snake was more occupied with getting out of the shower by attempting to climb up the wall that I don't think it hardly saw us.
I get out of the bathroom, slam the door and yell for the girls to call the gardener! Thankfully, all people and all 4 dogs were in the kitchen area and out of the way. So Brianna runs to do that and Claire, who is fearless, is crouching by the door to see if she can see it (I wouldn't let her open it) The gardener dutifully comes in with a stick and a machete. We show him the bathroom door and then close the hall door and stand and wait! We closed the hall door so that if the snake got out of the bathroom it didn't come straight into the room with the kids and the dogs but I still felt a little guilty and I stood in safety and sent him off to kill the snake! We waited about 2 minutes while we hear whacking from the bathroom and then he comes out pushing a still writhing snake along the floor, leaving blood spots. ughh.


The girls and the gardener said it was a Green Mamba (very poisonous and aggressive) but I think that is a pretty standard answer for all green snakes so I am not sure. However, we couldn't find the snake book so we put it in a bucket and put it up high where the dogs couldn't reach it to await Jeremy's assessment.

Oh, I just got a text from him and he said it was 100% a green mamba and that it was about 1.5 meters.(this is why little girls have fathers - there was no way I was going to measure the thing and Claire was the one who put it in the bucket!)

On the one hand I making this a pretty dramatic story but on the other hand, this situation had potential to be really dangerous - My theory is that the snake got in throught the open bathroom window above the shower and it just wanted back out when it couldn't get back up the wall there is no telling where it would have gone! Claire and Brianna of course run all over their house and karis tends to run around too and any one of them could have encountered it and had it even been curled up in the shower versus trying to get out then someone could have stepped on it. Had one us gotten bitten it would have been a really, really big deal so I just praise God that it worked out the way it did! AND that the gardener was there! Kate and I discussed that had he not been there we really would have had to have been responsible adults and killed it ourselves!! And had that happend we would have done fine BUT praise God for the gardener!