Wednesday, June 23, 2010

A SNOUT LIKE AN ELEPHANT

It was sometime during the last days of the Great Depression. Dad was working as a grave digger at the Park Lawn Cemetery in Fort Worth, Texas. Somehow he got some time off, more than likely, no one died that day, anyway he had some free time so he took Mom, Jo and I to the Fort Worth Zoo. I don’t really know why it stuck in my four or five year old brain, but I must have really been impressed with the elephants. For later that day after arriving back home, Mom sent us outside to play so she could get some work done. We were living in the cemetery in a house provided for the care takers. In my explorations I found myself in the barn. And there stretched across the aisle that ran between the milk cow stanchions was a creature I had never seen before. It had a long narrow body, except for the head. The head was twice the size of the circumference of his body, and it had a snout. I stared at it for a long time and it stared back at me. For whatever reason, I did not feel led to pick the thing up and take it to show Mom. But, about that time Dad came driving into the yard on the cemetery tractor. I ran over to him and told him to come with me. “There’s something in the barn that has a snout like an elephant.” Dad got down off the tractor and followed me to see this strange creature. When he saw it he didn’t stand and stare at it like I did. He grabbed a garden hoe propped up near the barn door and promptly tried to chop the creature in two. Its head flicked back a split second before the hoe buried into the ground in front of him. The snout disappeared into its mouth, the head struck forward over the hoe bound right for Dad, who did a quick Texas Two Step - I’m not sure that dance was invented at that time, but Dad did it just the same. Before Dad could get the hoe free from the dirt into which it was buried, the creature disappeared under the hay rack. Dad, using the hoe to poke around, could not find it. It was only after he was sure he could not find it, that he revealed to me that it was a snake and was not kin to elephants. The snout was the tail of a rat the snake was in the process of swallowing.

Dad and I had a pretty tall tail to talk about that night at the supper table. He commended me for not trying to pick it up, or play with it. He did not think it was (a new word) poisonous. That meant it couldn’t severely hurt me. It could bite, but the bite would not kill me, and Mom vowed to never go in the barn again. The reason I remember this incident out of my childhood is because I heard Dad or Mom rehearse this story numerous times. It’s funny how your mind retains certain things through the years.

My point is this: There are a couple of verses in the Bible that tells us about the personal angels God gives his people to protect them during times of harm. In fact it says, “He shall give his angels charge over thee that thou shall not dash thy foot against a stone.” Another one says, that our angels always behold the Father’s face. They always have his attention. I’m really glad my personal angel wasn’t afraid of snakes that day.

Don in Georgetown