We made an overnight trip to Kuala Lumpur on the weekend, thus providing enough material for a few blogs. While we were away, MIL babysat Lotus Street, looking forward to two days of peace, serenity and contemplating the pond. Poor poor woman. This is what happened.

On our first day away, she was busy catching up on her letter-writing, when she noticed Fluff and Squeak jumping around an extension cable near the front door. Curious, she rose to find out what the problem was and, as she neared the door, realised that it wasn’t a cable the cats were jumping around. After all, extension cables aren’t brown, a metre long, half upright, and hissing.

With the cats keeping the snake penned to the area just by the front door, she rushed off, returning with a walking stick … and a can of mosquito repellent. While she was relating this story, I commented to J that, if I was that snake, getting mosquito spray in my eyes would have probably pissed me off even more. Anyway, between the three of them, they killed the snake. MIL bagged it and threw it away in the rubbish bin. Even two hours later, when talking to J over the phone, she was still (understandably) shaken, and looking around desperately for some chamomile tea/valerian/industrial-strength morphine to calm her down.

This is what we figured happened. After much haranguing and gnashing of teeth, the telecommunications guys finally fronted up to our place late last week and began laying cable. In the process, they discovered blocked ducts, indicating infrastructure that had been laid years ago, but left untouched since then. In our carport is a small pit for the connection of said cable. Usually, it’s covered with a solid concrete lid, but it was askew to assist the telecommunications guys with their work. And it’s about two metres from our front door. So, all three of us figure that the cable-laying disturbed the poor snake and it decided to go looking for another place to live. And guess where it ended up?

There are no winners in this story. I like snakes. I like their “you don’t bother me, and I won’t bother you” philosophy, which I think the rest of the world could do well to emulate more. I doubt there are more serene animals in the world. I think the one that met its unfortunate fate in our house was probably a Bronzeback, which is not venomous, are very common in this region, and mostly go after frogs and small mammals.

And as for my MIL … well, imo, the woman deserves a medal at the very least. Here’s a Polish grandmother who’s travelled halfway around the world to a foreign-language, tropical country and is alone in the only inhabited house in the area. She is confronted face-to-face, for the first time in her life, by a majorly annoyed, loudly hissing snake in classic threatening posture, with her son and family hundreds of kilometres away. She said that Fluff and Squeak were on that snake in an instant, and provided invaluable help despatching the reptile. (The next day, Squeak undid part of his goodwill bonus points by eating one of our pond fish. I think he thinks he’s invincible now.)

Which all sounds great. Except, I wouldn’t subject most people I know to the kind of stress involved in confronting a pissed-off snake. And, of course, it would have to happen on the one night we were away from the house. When we got home, J also checked under the hood of our car (we took public transport to and from KL), in case there was another snake that took refuge in another favourite snake spot, but it looks like there was just the one hapless animal.

And that’s our most recent snake story.

CONNECTIVITY UPDATE: All cables are connected on our side, but we’re still not getting access. The telecommunications guys (Time dot Com, in case you were wondering) are going to have “a meeting” to “discuss the situation”. The sound you hear is my head hitting a solid surface. Repeatedly.