Snake Stories

The title alone probably gives you the shivers! I don’t know about you, but I hate snakes! Snakes are one of my many fears! The Philippines has many different varieties of snakes such as: Cobras, Pit Vipers, Coral Snakes, Sea Snakes, Oriental Whip Snakes, Wolf Snakes, Bronzebacks, Flying Snakes, and Pythons. Thankfully, in the area of the Philippines that my family lived in, we didn’t have too many problems with snakes although we did have a couple encounters.

Coconuts & Snakes: My family rented a house in the Philippines for 10 years before it burned down. It had a decent sized yard that, as kids, my siblings and I would play in. It was perfect for our family. There were plenty of trees to climb and plenty of space to run. We had so many different kinds of fruit trees in our yard! We had a mango tree, starfruit tree, tambis tree, pomelo tree, and a ton of coconut trees. Sometimes, guys from our neighborhood would ask to climb our coconut trees and get the coconuts for their families. My parents usually said yes, and the guys would climb all the way to the top and get the coconuts they wanted. One time, we were watching some guys that were getting coconuts from our tree when suddenly, without warning, the guys jumped out of the tree! They ran out of our gate and were gone. We wondered what had happened to them, so my dad followed them and asked what happened?! The men replied that they had seen two pythons in our tree! Needless to say, we didn't go near that tree anymore.

Kids & Snakes: Every Saturday, our church does Extension Classes. These are like Good News classes in America. We teach the kids songs and tell them a Bible Story. We have many teams that go out to different areas on Saturday and hold classes. I had an area that I went to every week. One week, we arrived at our area, and there was this group of kids gathered around a little boy. I wondered what the fuss was about, and when I walked over there I realized what it was! It was a HUGE snake. The little boy had taped its mouth shut and was playing with it! I was shocked! They asked me if I wanted to hold the snake! Of course, I said "No!".

Eating Snakes: One particular Saturday, I was out visiting with my soul winning group and right in the middle of the road, we saw the biggest snake skin that I have ever seen. We stopped to talk to the lady of the house who was outside cooking at the time. We asked about the snake skin in front of her house, and she told us the whole story. They were washing clothes when they saw the snake at the river. They killed the snake and brought it home for supper. That is when we found out the food that she was cooking was not chicken, like I originally thought, but snake!

#Home