Just so you know...

Yesterday our next door neighbor kindly informed me that his maid had spotted a "rather large"snake in their yard and he thought they had scared into our yard. Lovely. He didn't know what kind, just that it was "rather large". He said he was going to get some of the gate guards to help him try and get it out. So, not knowing what we're looking for, I informed the kids and wisely headed,  my househelper, Truphena's advice to close the doors so it doesn't come inside (yikes, I hadn't even thought of that, THANK GOD she was here! We usually leave our doors open most all the time for breeze...we're on the equator here, you'll remember, no fall weather now) I also put our dog outside to perform his guardly duties and hopefully alert us if he discovered the snake in question. I'm not deathly afraid of snakes, though I would likely not choose one as a pet....but here the poisonous snake possibilities are many: puff adder, mamba -green or black, even cobras in the desert regions. Several minutes later, we were trying to carry on with home schooling, but were overwhelmed with smokiness. Smoke is normal....lots of neighbors cook on charcoal stoves just outside their kitchens. This was no charcoal fire. They were burning paper and lots of it, blowing right in our front windows (and not wafting very quickly out the back windows) they were trying to smoke the snake out, but they were about to smoke us out as we weighed going outside and facing a snake or staying in coughing. I got our our rotating fan and it made breathing and schoolwork manageable again. But I thought about our neighbors and the guards trying to smoke out the snake at our fence line, I imagined they might smoke him out, but probably into our yard and not into their waiting trap. That was yesterday, still no sign of the snake. Pray it's just a garden snake!