Not the screen door that doesn't quite shut, or the gutter that no longer drains, or the minor leak along the edge of the back roof (those leaks stay minor, right)?
We have snakes in our crawlspace. They found a way into the crawlspace through an old basement cover that wasn't quite as closed as I thought it was.
Julie and Laura discovered them first.
They thought they were cute.
A quote from Julie the other day: "I kept looking around the corner at the snake and he would go back into his hole. Then he would stick his head out and I would peek around the corner again and he'd go back. We were playing hide and seek!"
That is a glimpse into the mind of my wonderful wife. She lives in a beautiful world. It's not the real world, but it's beautiful.
My daughter Laura even took a photo of one of the snakes sunning itself near the now-unclosable crawlspace cover. I shamelessly stole it from her blog. Here it is:
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad my wife and daughter don't panic when they see a snake. But I ask you: Is this the way to eradicate snakes? So I placed a hoe near the offending crawlspace opening and sternly told Julie, "Listen. You have to kill the snakes."
Julie looked up at me lovingly and said, "I will."
Fat chance! She couldn't kill a rabid dog if it was chewing on her leg. She'd say, "Oh, you must have been a poor misunderstood dog. Let me love you back to acceptable social behavior so you can sit on my lap while I watch TV."
Now here is a further problem. I cannot just crawl into the crawlspace with a good light and 12 gauge shotgun and blow them into pieces like Indiana Jones would. This is because the designers of the add-on room only made the crawlspace openings as big as one cement block.
One block.
Even a ten-year-old couldn't squeeze in there.
There is a window into the larger basement, but someone who was, shall we say, lacking foresight ran the heating duct through it. Yes. Through a small circle cut into something opaque set into the window pane. So, opening the window isn't an option.
After searching the web, Julie had an idea. "We can use mothballs," she said gaily. "They confuse the snakes' senses and they move out!" So I tossed mothballs into their entryway. Immediately after which my family made me take a shower because they said I smelled offensively like mothballs.
So now, the back of the house smells faintly of mothballs.
The basement smells faintly of mothballs.
I smell faintly of mothballs.
However (holding my breath here) it might have worked. The snakes appear to have moved out. Julie says she checks twice a day and has seen no sign of them.
Which brings me to my point. There are some things that you just can't tolerate.
Mice in the kitchen.
A spider--even a tiny baby spider--in our bedroom.
Snakes in the crawlspace.
Sin is like that. As a Christian, you just can't tolerate it. That's because, like snakes in a crawlspace, sin doesn't stay in one place. It grows, has "baby snakes," and eventually takes over your life.
God told the Hebrews, as they were about to enter their promised land, "Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the [Euphrates] River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:14). Apparently they were carrying little "pocket idols" as insurance so they could keep safe. Not good.
Peter wrote to the early church, "Dear friend, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul" (I Peter 2:11).
James wrote, "Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is fully formed, gives birth to death" (James 1:15).
Little snakes grow big. They lay eggs and have baby snakes. Which also grow.
The answer, of course, is Jesus Christ. Not only did he die on a cross to remove our sins, he gave us the Holy Spirit who gives us the power to walk away from sin.
I like to pray this prayer: "Jesus, I want to live a holy life for you. I want to have holy eyes for you, holy thoughts for you." I find that when I pray that, really meaning it, God gets the "snakes" out of my life.
When they slither back, I go back to Jesus and pray it again.
If you want to know more about this horrific snake incident, check out Laura's blog.
Just don't believe anything she writes about me.
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