WHAT TO DO FOR SNAKE BITES [F, 1-1-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

WHAT TO DO FOR SNAKE BITES            [F, 1-1-21]

Some advice to start the new year…

Writers tend to be a bit different, so daughter Katie Kennedy [1] has a writer friend who raises goats. I don’t know why anyone raises farm animals unless they have to. I grew up on a farm, so I know that even though we call them “dumb animals,” they are really smart. They know our intentions. They know we are just using them—for eggs and milk, and chops and steaks, and leather and labor. So, anytime they get a chance, they run for the hills.

In the case of Katie’s writer friend, recently the goats ran quite literally for the hills, for the very steep hills that surround her place. Her daughter was gone, and she had the care of the grandkids by herself, so she had to take them with her, as they went up and down hills and brambles and streams and the other places that abound in a story like this, trying to get the goats back..

In the process of rounding up the recalcitrant goats, she saw a snake. She didn’t point it out to the grands, for fear it might be poisonous. When they finally got back to the house, they looked it up in the snake book. It was indeed poisonous, very much so, with symptoms, if bitten, of “vomiting and swearing,” as her little granddaughter read the book out loud to them.

“Grandma, that snake must have bit you,” she said, “for you were doing a lot of swearing out there.”

Turns out that the book said “vomiting and sweating,” not “swearing,” but the grandkids insisted on checking Grandma for snake bites, anyway.

That’s a good idea. There must be a lot of snake biting going on, because there is plenty of swearing going on.

When you see a snake bite, you’re supposed to put your mouth on it and suck the poison out. I don’t think I’ll do that, because sucking on a snake bite would make me swear even more.

So, what do you do when you find a bite? For heaven’s sake, you shouldn’t be putting yourself in the way of snakely harm in the first place. Just get rid of the damn goats

John Robert McFarland

1] Katie Kennedy’s most recent book is The Constitution Decoded.

Please note that I wrote 2021 above instead of 2020. I’m unduly proud of that.