Coming home from a
fortnight-holiday in Japan, we were met by a horrible smell of decaying flesh
when we opened the front door of our house. Putting down our luggage, we began
searching for the source of the foul odour. It finally led us to our bedroom.
The stench of rotting
flesh was very intense in the room. On moving the bed from the side of one of
the walls, I found the shrivelled body of a dead snake behind some books in the
corner. There was only the skin left as the body had nearly all rotted away. It
looked like a cobra. It must have starved to death after we had locked the door
to the bedroom when we left for Japan.
That poisonous snake
when alive must have been, unknown to me, my bedfellow as I usually slept on
the parquet floor beside the bed because of my bad back. It must have been
coming in and out of the room without our knowledge. It was fortunate that I
had kept all my bedtime-reading books under the bed which had shielded me from
the reptile.
I now keep the bedroom
door firmly shut at all times for fear of its mate. I will also keep all our
doors shut especially the kitchen door which leads to the backyard. I pray that
its mate will look for somewhere else to live.
ltbs
No greater hell than to
be slave to fear.
Ben Johnson
