Oh-No! Here we go again. At this time there have been a couple “Oh No’s”. First Loren, dear boy, has had yet another accident. He cut his finger on a broken tile. It hurt, no, scratch that. It was beyond hurt—Way Beyond. He was upset with the old plummer who had chopped out tile in a shower INSTEAD of figuring out the easy way of replacing the tap correctly. Loren was showing him how it should have been done and the broken tile nailed him. So after a lot of blood and Band-Aids I fixed him up and now after several days in a finger splint, he is recovering.
Then yesterday we are sitting in a staff meeting when screams are heard coming from the student kitchen. With our pulse quickening we jumped up and ran down the veranda. “SNAKE, SNAKE!!! IT IS A COBRA!!!” Oh-No, not another snake at Prakash. I am bending over for a look-see, trying to get a picture while Loren is yelling for me to get back.
The cook ladies, with hearts racing and nerves atingle, stand on the veranda stricken. I hugged the one who first saw the snake and then suggested that we all go to the guest kitchen for tea.
As the story unfolds, one cook lady was sitting on the floor working and the snake hooded and swaying was ready to strike, when the other lady saw it. Praise God they reacted calmly and GOT OUT OF THERE!!!!
The night before Loren and I were scanning the channels on our TV for ANYTHING in English, when we happened upon a National Geographic program about King Cobras in India. We learned several things, like these snakes are snake-eaters, not rodent eaters. They love the Rat Snake and the Rat Snake loves rats. Before this program, we knew nothing about the eating habits of cobras. God knew we needed this knowledge.
After killing the snake we were off to the grain storage area, only to find rat droppings everywhere. No metal bins only grain sacks. A rat will find a sack of grain any day no matter where it is. So in order for us to rid ourselves of the cobras we need to rid ourselves of the rats. The rats invaded us because we have not properly stored the grain. So in truth the problem is not getting rid of the cobra, but storing the grain properly. How do we say? — “Getting to the root of the problem.”—What a lesson.
Our prayer is always to have wisdom. Who knew we would get it from National Geographic?
