An Unexpected Turn

Since living in Argentina, I’ve always been weirdly looking forward to coming across a snake. We saw one on honeymoon on a tree but it was such an incredibly dinky little thing, I feel it didn’t really count. Well, after nearly four years of living here, I came across one! And I can say that it was actually quite scary and I am oficially not a fan 😂

To explain what happened, oddly enough, I need to go back a few years. When Nolz and I got engaged, I told myself that when I was married I’d pick up running. Now that might also sound slightly strange, but I knew by that point I’d be living in a new neighbourhood and I had been put off running in the city centre due to the various times I’d twisted my ankle just walking along the pavements in the city centre, let alone trying to run. Unbeknownst to me, when I made the decision that in future I would become a runner, I didn’t quite realise how much of my neighbourhood would be uphill. So, fast forward to March 2023, and we’re on week 5 of couch to 5k. For the first time we need to do two eight minute runs. I was highly doubtful I’d manage to get through this if any part involved an uphill, so I decided to go for the path of least resistance (or so I thought) and drive to the one part in the neighbourhood that’s nice and flat and run along there.

All was going smoothly and I, for once, was leading the charge and was up front! Well, technically, Luna was leading and the two of us were floundering behind her, but I was slightly ahead of Nolz. It seems that when I run I look down at the floor (perhaps due to so many twisted ankle experiences), because suddenly, right there in my vision, was the snake, just lying in the middle of the path. It was such a shock that it was suddenly just there that I SCREAMED which in turn startled the snake who flung itself into the air in an attempt to get away from the crazy screaming lady but therefore directly towards Noly who also screamed and jumped over it. Goodness me!! I’m not quite sure what Luna thought of the whole thing as she was further away from us and evidently trotted past the snake without noticing it thankfully.

Now, if it hadn’t suddenly been infront of me whilst I was running, I would like to think I would have reacted with no scream and calmly just moved away from it. I’m aware that’s probably the expected procedure, especially since my scream prompted such a reaction from the snake. However in our situation, whilst I definitely scared the snake out of its skin (I suspect it was having a little siesta), it was a good thing I did scream as Nolz wasn’t looking at the floor and would have stepped on it. At the point that it jumped into the air he was already nearly ontop of it and didn’t have time to go round it, hence why he jumped over it.

This is the part that has been going on repeat round in my head, seeing the snake suddenly fling itself backwards directly towards Noly. It’s part hilarious part completely horrifying!

But anyways, after the initial shock wore off, we were just so thankful to God that nothing worse happened because not only did Luna trot right past it without wanting to investigate and Noly nearly step onto it, but its markings and arrow shaped head suggest it was highly venomous so the evening could have ended up very differently.

Since then, we have been through our what-should-we-do-in-a-snake-bite protocol and have decided that we probably shan’t be going for a run again down there any time soon!

So there you are. I definitely would not recommend coming across a snake! For obvious reasons we didn’t stick around to take a photo, so I shall leave you with a completely unrelated photo of us hanging out with Nolys uncle and family when they come across from Spain. Ta ra!