Close encounters of the reptilian kind

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So I have spent the whole of summer anticipating but not seeing a single snake - until yesterday.  After tales of cobras in houses and snakes in bedrooms and sunning themselves on the warm roads after the heat of the day has gone, I encounter my first snake in the middle of the school's playground.  What is the first thing I see?  Two of my students going at it with lumps of wood in a killing frenzy.  I tell them to get away but another kid just says to me, 'We will kill it.'   Finally, the two kids stop thumping the snake and it's laying there, completely still, faking death - despite the whalloping it had taken.  I finally get the kids to move away from it and the school's guard comes over with a little broom.  I'm wondering what he thinks he's going to do with a broom?  Turns out he plans to sweep the snake away.  I laugh aloud: ludicrous!  Surely, you can't just sweep away a snake.  Wrong!  What does he do?  He sweeps it away.  Just like that.  This casual approach is news to me as a snake novice.  I'm not surprised to see the snake suddenly come to life and slither away from the gentle butts from the broom.  The guard sweeps the snake to the back gate and then simply picks it up and tosses it into the back rice field like he's throwing away a tree branch - so simple, so casual, no high drama.  Only the kids are there behind him shouting:  Kill it!  Kill it!  He just gave them a wise, knowing smile, shook his head like it was the saddest but most inevitable thing he would expect to hear, and closed the gate behind him.

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