Tuesday, March 13, 2018

March 13 – “Real, slimy, squirmy snakes”


I dove into work yesterday.  Typical Monday.  Not that it was an easy task.  The sky was still dark.  The wind was whipping at a 20 miles per hour rate.  The temperature hovered around 54 degrees, with a wind chill of 48.  All in all a bitter cold winter day in Galveston.  When Chris woke up she entered the office and even before she said, “Good morning,” she announced that she was turning on the heater.  Not such a great start to Spring Break.  In fact, even the newspaper headlines this morning read: “Spring brrrr-eak.” I don’t think it will stop the hordes of tourists, though.  Bring ‘em on.

I forced myself to go to the class I signed up for.  The one that’s supposed to be on planning your will and the like.   Thus far it has been all about financial planning and investing.  Yawn.  Yesterday was a little different.  Well, it was more of the same, only more so.  In fact they began speaking in a different language.  I understood a few words every now and then, but I don’t do well being immersed in a different culture when I don’t know the language at all.  I did manage to uncover a major part of the plot to confuse me.  Apparently this was the second part of the class.  A vast majority of the people there had already been through the class before, and most of the rest already knew the language, so the teacher was moving on at their level.  I for one do not know how to speak Financial.  Never have had a desire of any kind to learn the language.  Give me Greek any day.  And here’s the confession part … I ditched the second half of class during the break.  Never had the guts to do that when I was in real school.  Kind of exhilarating, actually.  Um, I mean, don’t try this at home, kids.

On a lighter note, we went to a program at the library with Christina and the kids.  Snakes.  Yep.  Real, slimy, squirmy snakes.  And when the guy asked for adult volunteers, guess who jumped at the chance?  No, not Chris.  She is firmly in the camp that there was a reason Satan took the form of a snake, and he is probably still in there somewhere.  She and the lady next to her were doing their best to hide behind each other.  I joined several others as station monitors for the children to meet five or six different breeds of snake.  And by “station monitor” I mean, we each held one of the snakes while the kids came over to pet them.  I had Jeremy, an albino rat snake.  Beautiful critter.  He even enjoyed wrapping himself around my neck and giving me a hug.  Not sure I’ll repeat that feat any time soon.  Many of the kids jumped at the chance to pet and even hold the snakes.  In fact one of the first ones to my station was none other than my four year old granddaughter Noa.  She immediately held out her hands to let Jeremy squirm around a while.  Her older brothers?  Yeah, not so much.  They all took a giant step backwards when the snakes came anywhere near them.  Best part of the day?  Chris was holding Ezra in her lap, and he reached for the snake.  She handed Micah her phone to take a picture.  Jeremy did his snake thing and slithered through Ezra’s hands and down his side and around his waist toward his back.  Only thing was, “his back” meant that the snake was actually touching Chris’s body.  Suddenly and inexplicably it became time for the snake to return to his handler.  Can’t have poor little Ezra getting scared now, can we?  By the way, Micah got some really good pictures of Chris – er, I mean Ezra, of course – cuddling with the snake. 

Psalms 37:11 says, “But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy great peace.”

Father, thank you for all of your creatures.  Even snakes.  Amen.

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