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Sunday, August 21, 2011

The Journey of Sheeka









For those of you who don't know, not long ago, while visiting Grandma Bell in Brigham City, my boys discovered a beautiful female Gopher snake crawling down the road. We captured her and brought her home. She is now a part of our little zoo. (Yes, we have a zoo. We have two dogs, two birds, two fish, one snake and three stray cats we feed!) The snake's original name was Bully, but due to our discovery that the "he" was a "she", the snake became Sheeka. Well, two weeks ago, our Sheeka shed. I was sure after she completed the shedding process, she would eat again. Thus far, she has had no appetite. I have been very concerned about her and her happiness. I decided a couple of days ago to let her crawl around the cupboard in the kitchen, in the sunshine, hoping a little freedom might perk her up. At first, it was fine. She slithered up into the window seal and in and out of the blinds. She layed in the open window, basking in the sun. It was great! Since it was successful to let her crawl then, I figured she could do that same today and be fine. How wrong I was! She discovered a little ledge at the top of window, which she happily crawled into. The ledge itself wasn't a problem. The problem was getting her out again. We were meeting my sister and her family at Riverwalk, so we had to get her off the ledge and back into her cage before departing. Well, being comfortable in her little niche, she didn't want to come out. I got this brillant idea that we could gently nudge her with a straw to get her to move. Well, she did move when we prodded her, but she discovered a hole in the window in which she quickly crawled. This particular hole was on the top right side and went all the way down the window frame. (In my defense, I did not realize the hole was present!) There was no way to access that hole except from the top right of the window or the bottom left of the window. I am not doing a good job explaining. Let me just say, we thought Skeeka was lost and gone forever in the interior wall of our house. The kids started crying. It was pandemonium! My sweet Spencer came to me, with his pure little heart, and begged me to gather everyone for a special prayer that we could get our snake out of the wall. We all knelt down and I said a quick but heartfelt prayer that if it were possible, we could find a way to retrieve our snake. In the mean time, my handyman husband went to work trying to scare her out. At first he lit matches and held them to the hole opening. That didn't work. Then he got his compressor and blew air into the hole. That made her tail come out of the hole, but she was still inside. He finally got the idea to use alcohol. He put an alcohol soaked cottong ball up to the hole and guess what?? Our snake came out of the wall!!!! It was a miracle for the Winn Family! The boys all hugged her. We made sure she was not hurt and promptly returned her to her cage. We had a wonderful discussion about how Heavenly Father answers our prayers, especially when we have great faith in Him. In this instance, it was His will our snake come out of the wall before she died and stunk up our house. (0: I know my sweet boys will remember forever the day Sheeka was rescued from possible death.

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