Recently, an event came to mind from some years ago. My oldest son was about three years old . . . We were living in the Missouri Ozarks at the time. I was fixing something in the kitchen one morning. I don't remember why, but one of the doors to the kitchen cabinets under the sink was open. My son was cute sitting on his heels in a manner only a little kid can manage. As he was squatting there, I was only half listening when he said, “Daddy, there's a snake under the sink.” My answer was typical. “Oh, there is not.” He was insistent, “There is too!”
My attention was aroused, but my concern was not. I came to where he was crouching, looked under the sink, and, sure enough, there was a three foot black snake draped around the drain pipe--hissing and flicking his tongue in and out, in and out!
I moved quickly now. Scooping my son up and setting him down at a safe distance, I assessed the situation.
This would not do! A snake under the kitchen sink? It was not safe for him, his sister, nor his mother.
The snake had to be eliminated. I didn't want it to get out and into the house. At the time we lived a little distance from Grandpa Lakey who was summoned immediately. He came with a gun and equal concern that the critter be quickly dispatched, even though a black snake is not considered very dangerous.
Grandpa shot the snake. And I dragged its writhing carcass out the door and buried it in the backyard.
I do not know how that snake got in the house. My son probably doesn't remember the old Berry Place and would have been too little to remember the incident. The house was about four and a half miles out in the country. It had pastures for cattle just beyond the yard area. A small pond is not very far from the house and beyond that are wooded areas. Somehow that black snake had left the great outdoors and found its way into the large basement area, crawled up the pipes and settled in the kitchen cabinet.
I would have been considered a foolish man had I shrugged my shoulders at the presence of the snake in the kitchen cabinets. I could have proposed that the snake would have eaten any mice that might have come into the house. Yes, there could have been benefits to having him under that sink. But wisdom demanded that the snake go.
Surely, you have no thought of putting your family in danger. Each of you wants your family to be safe and happy. Yet some of you have in the kitchen cabinets, the refrigerator, the garage fridge, a substance more dangerous than any black snake.
“All is well, I don't drink very much.” You may say, “Alcohol even has benefits.” But for any of you to keep that which “biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder” is dangerous and foolhardy! Wisdom and the command of Scripture demand that the alcohol in your life be dispatched with haste, for you and your family are in danger.
Mark Lauger
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