SCARED TO DEATH

By Scott E. Power

In a faraway land, but not too far, there was an old farmer. Through years of hard work and long days, he had become very strong and wise. In fact, he was regarded as the wisest person in the entire town. He was very proud of this fact. And he was vain enough that he never let anyone forget just how smart he was.

One day, while he was performing one of his many farming chores, ploughing the fields, he came upon a snake. It laid there in the dirt, motionless. The man wondered if it was dead. He questioned what kind of snake it was. It just laid there coiled up, appearing to be dead. The farmer couldn't stand his curiosity very long. He had to know if it was really dead or if it was just sleeping. Actually, the farmer had never seen a snake like it before. There were weird shapes on its back, kind of like the shapes in a spider's web. It seemed that it was an extraordinary snake.

The farmer bent over, stretching forth a stick to prod the snake, to see if it was alive. But after it was too late, he realized the foolhardiness of his behavior. For just as the tip of the stick was threatening to touch the snake, it sprang out of its coil as quick as lightening, bit the farmer, sinking its fangs deep into his flesh.

After releasing itself from the man's leg, the snake quickly slid away and coiled itself in the dirt. The shock and the horror of the bite was overwhelming for the farmer. He had seen snakes many times before, but had never ever been bitten. As he stood there in shock, wondering what to do, he realized that the nearest doctor was more than one day's journey away. Immediately, the man fell dead.

Many hours passed before anyone found the man. He wife was the first to happen upon him. When he didn't come to the house for lunch, she got worried and went searching.

Upon finding the dead man, she also saw the snake and killed it with the backside of a shovel. She couldn't help but kill the snake, knowing intuitively what it had done. She took vengeance, stabbing the snake with the shovel, cutting it into many pieces. She wanted to find out what kind of snake it was, since it was obviously poisonous. Picking up the bloody remnants of the dead snake, the wife had wished she hadn't made such a mess. But she too had never seen such a deadly looking snake.

After having the snake identified, the farmers' wife was shocked to find the reptile was not a rare, lethal snake at all. It was just a common garden snake with unusual markings. The man did not die from poisonous venom. He had been struck dead by fear of a harmless strike of a common garden snake.

The moral of the story is to always be smart, but not too smart; scared, but not too scared.

STORY OUTLINE

I. An old farmer is in the field doing chores.

II. As he is working, he is bitten by a fierce looking snake.

III. Realizing the nearest doctor is one day's journey away, he falls dead.

IV. He wife finds his dead body. Seeing the snake nearby she understands what happened and she kills the snake with a shovel.

V. Later, she find out the snake was not poisonous and that her husband died of fright.

VI. The moral of the story is to always be smart, but not too smart; scared, but not too scared.