Sammy and the snake

“Let’s go to the creek,” Grandpa said. And the nine, eight, six five and four year-old children pulled on their shoes and left with their grandfather to take a short walk to the shallow, rock lined flow of water. The other adults relaxed, visited and enjoyed a quiet conversation except one momma who went to take a nap with the two year-old. Grandpa could manage a few kids playing in the water.
The rest of the adults chatted quietly until eight year-old Sophie came in crying and screaming, “Sammy got bit by a snake! Sammy got bit by a snake!”
Say what?!
She went into hysterics, dancing in place, flapping her hands and hyperventilating, “I don’t want Sammy to die. I don’t want him to die.” Daddy barely managed a question or two before five-year-old Sammy came strolling in with his grandfather and the other children, and quietly stared at all the fuss.
“What kind of snake was it?” the adults asked.
“A brown snake.” he said. “I saw the dirt moving and then a snake came out.”
His hand was bloody, his ankle was bleeding, but he did not seem concerned. He held out his hands and feet and let the adults wash away the blood and study the wounds. The adults looked at him. He was not stressed. Yet, he continued to say he had seen and been bitten by a brown snake.
Momma was pulled out of her afternoon nap to inspect her son and go with Daddy to the hospital. Can’t be too careful about snake bites, especially when the culprit disappears as quickly as this one had.
In the quiet that followed, Sophie would rouse in distress every time the door opened. She rushed over to shut it. “I am so scared that a snake will come in.” With four other children humming around the house, the door opened and shut many times. She went back and forth between worrying her brother would die and shutting the door to keep the snakes out.
She did not volunteer to go back to the creek to get her brother’s sneakers. Her nine-year-old cousin scoffed at the idea of going back. “No way. I don’t want to be bit by a snake.” His head shook emphatically “No.”
His four year old sister looked at him and went to get the shoes.
“Really, you are going to let your little sister get the shoes? “
“Yes!”
At the emergency room, the staff moved Sammy quickly into an examination room.
At the house the adults began looking up symptoms of a snake bite, studying what kind of snake it might have been, and debated time and again “was it or wasn’t it a snake.” If it was a snake, what kind would it have been. The bite marks just did not look right.
The doctor looked at the calm, pain-free child and his wounds. He shook his head. He did not think the lad had been bitten by a venomous snake. There was no swelling, “but let’s keep him here and watch for a couple hours just to be sure.”
Sammy placidly looked at the camera when his mom posted a picture of him on the examining cot in the ER. She posted pictures of his bites and asked a friend experienced with snakes for her input. “Does not look like a venomous bite to me.” the friend posted.
Momma breathed a sigh of relief.
The doctor returned, looked at the marks one more time and said, “You can go home.”
Sammy returned home very much alive, told his story again and again, looked in wonder at his hospital wristband and decided it was time for the fuss to be over and for him to go out and play.
That night his friend’s mother saw the posting and showed her daughter. Hearing the tale, the little girl declared, “If Sam had died from the snake bite, I would have gone to his grave every day for a million years.”
Sam did not die, but the drama definitely will be visited many times in the years to come. Already by that evening the snake has grown considerably larger. Who knows how big it will be by the time he is a grandpa taking his grandkids down to the creek to play.