The Elusive Water Snake

We live about five miles outside a small town in South Carolina's upstate. That puts us near enough to civilization to obtain all the modern conveniences like shopping malls, grocery stores and fast food restaurants, but too far for good cell phone coverage, city trash pick up and public transportation. There are advantages to living in the countryside. One of them, as I've mentioned before on this blog is the wildlife, our pond, the open field, the woods, the river and the mountain views.

We now have 57 chickens which need daily tending. Our chicken coops, for many reasons (particularly the noise and the odor), are located on the other end of our property. Once or twice a day (depending on the weather), we have to go and collect eggs, check the feeders and waters and open or close the coops. Tonight, my husband volunteered me for chicken coop duty. It was a beautiful night, so I didn't mind. I grabbed the flashlight and headed down through woods and across the field to visit the chickens.

As I often do when I make this trek after dark, I stop by the pond to listen to the frogs and look for the water snake that lives in our pond. As I flashed the light on the water, I so no sign of the snake. I turned the light off for a moment and listened. The water stirred. It was probably a frog. The song of the tree frogs made it sound as if the trees were singing. I clicked the flashlight back on and scanned the water. Some minnows, startled by the light woke from their quiet slumber and wiggled a bit. I could see the outline of a large tadpole resting on the bottom pond. The snake was still no where to be seen, but I imagined that it's eyes were on me. Turning the flashlight off again, I turned and headed up the hill up through the woods and up to our house.

As I walked, I wondered what it must have been like to have lived in the mountains years ago when there was no electricity. Did they go out at night and stand in the moonlight as I was doing? Did they carry a candle or a lantern to seen in the dark? Did the hear the tree frogs and the coyotes? Though it is marred and scarred by sin, the world we live in is beautiful. God spoke people through his creation then, and He does today.