Anaconda

I was in my guest house, innocently washing my unmentionables, when some volunteers came in and excitedly asked me if I had “seen the dead snake.” Well, I hadn’t in fact, “seen the dead snake” but intended to change that fact. I walked outside and down the road not 20 seconds and saw a group of about 25 people standing around something that I can only conclude was the snake of the moment. I walked over and peered into the spectacle from the crowd. Now, a snake conjures up images of something small and slithery. This thing was biblical! It was really more of a small dragon without the feet. In it’s thickest parts it was nearly the size of a new roll of paper towels and was probably ten feet long – although it was all coiled up on the ground. Apparently someone had trapped it in the “gulf” which is kind of a cesspool just on the edge of camp and the location of all kinds of nefarious activity. Last year they actually found the corpses of some Liberians who had been butchered in a horribly violent murder in the gulf. But mainly people just go there to relieve themselves. So, someone had trapped themselves this monster and everyone was milling about deciding what to do about it. The number 40,000 was being thrown around as a suggested price for the snake in the market (about $5.00). I threw in the suggestion that I could eat it, and got a bit of a laugh. I asked my neighboring on-looker how it tasted and he said, “Oh, snake is very sweet.” I’m willing to take that one on faith. Other snake-viewers told me that they would never eat snake because it is evil. I suppose that is as good a reason as any. In the end it took two strong men to carry the beast up the road to market, where it has been by now made into soup or boots or medicine or more likely all three.