To Spare the Life of a Snake

  Several weeks ago, I attempted to rescue the life of a wild baby rabbit whose legs I had accidentally mangled with our riding lawn mower. Ultimately, the rabbit died from infections and maggots. But one of the things the Lord instructed us during this time was that it is He who decides who lives and who dies, especially on this farm which belongs to Him. And His instructions to Heidi and I were explicit after that, we were to ask before we took the life of any animal on this property.

Today, I went to let our dogs in from the front yard for their dinner. I saw that they were barking at something. Well, that something turned out to be a relatively large red snake. I quickly brought the dogs in and informed those in the house that there was a snake in the front yard. We had seen this snake before, but had let it go believing that it was a relatively harmless rat snake (though we believe that it later ate one of our chicks). But someone had told Heidi that it was in fact a copperhead.

Heidi hurries out to see what it is, and she sees that it is the same snake we encountered before, and as far as she knows, this is a copperhead, which is an extremely venomous and deadly snake. My first thought was we need to take a shovel to its head and not take the chance. But Heidi remembered the Lord’s instructions on this matter, and she asks and gets that we are not to kill it, but relocate it. I ask as well, and get the same thing.

To be perfectly honest, I was incredulous. If this was truly such a threat, then it needed to be dealt with. To have two people with little idea how to relocate a snake in the first place attempt it with a venomous animal was insane. I said something to this effect, but Heidi held firm that this is what we both got from the Lord, and this is what we needed to do. So, she sends me looking for a plastic tub and a stick. After a failed attempt with a cooler and a pitchfork, I locate an unused tub and a long thin length of PVC which would serve.

Both of us trying to keep our distance, we try herding the snake into the tub. It goes about as well as expected on the first try. The snake makes a run for it. I try herding it back, it gets testy and slips past me. It then goes and hides in a bush and Heidi begins using the stick to try and scare it out. All of the while, we’re working under the assumption that this snake is lethal.

I begin to get frustrated, and start talking about grabbing the shovel again and just ending it because I don’t want Heidi injured, or Holly our cat who is hiding under the car watching the whole thing. This whole thing is taking too long, and it’s too dangerous. But Heidi reminds me again that she’s just trying to obey what we’re told. And so we press on.

Finally, the snake makes a break for it running along the edge of the (closed) garage door and I stab at it with the end of the PVC, pinning it into place so it can’t move. Snot like stuff starts appearing out of it, and feces appears nearby. It starts trying to strike at us, but then Heidi notices something. “I don’t see any fangs!” She tells me. I look again as it opens its mouth. I don’t see any fangs either. We throw the plastic bin over it, and eventually, carefully, work the lid underneath it, enclosing it. Neither of us understand why it doesn’t have fangs. But we apparently scared both the urine and the feces out of it. And all I can think about is that, for a lethal snake, this animal has only been trying to get away from us. It didn’t attempt to strike until it was pinned and scared to death.

We take the animal across the road and down a little bit and release it into a field that is almost never used anymore on the neighbor’s property who lives in Owensboro now. The snake slithers away from us and into the brush almost as soon as the lid is opened.

Both Heidi and I immediately look up images of snakes when we get back to the house. It was never a copperhead at all. It was just an innocent red rat snake that got caught in the wrong yard by two dogs, and terrorized by two humans. I was going to kill an animal that didn’t need to be killed, and was probably more beneficial than not just because it was mistakenly identified as harmful.

God was right. We didn’t need to kill it. But my fear nearly caused me to disobey and harm an innocent creature. My actions and words were my own, and it was only the trust and faith of my wife which saved both the snake, and saved me from taking a life that didn’t need to be taken.