snakes – 2 Traveling Dogs

This is Peanut Butter Brickle. Everyone knows I am brave. Fearless. Flawless. But that’s a different blog for a different day.

But even I have to acknowledge when someone deserves an honor for bravery and fearlessness. That someone deserves more than an honorable mention. That someone is a chipmunk. A very brave chipmunk in the barn.

We had bad weather yesterday and thru the night. The kind of weather that made it impossible to be outside. So our friends told us that Girl Person could do her work in the barn. It was perfect. She had an appointment on the phone. She had a lot of writing to do. And so we set up our office in the barn. And we got to working. Yes, me and Digby are on call. On call for napping.

As she worked and was talking on the phone thing, Boy Person came in the barn to get something. All of a sudden he was running around. He was going back and forth between the barn door and inside. Girl Person was trying to listen on her phone, and she just tried to ignore what he was doing. But he seemed very, very upset and worried about something. He kept trying to get her attention.

Then, as fast as he could scurry, a chipmunk also started running around too. Boy Person tried to talk to the chipmunk, who at this point was totally ignoring Boy Person yelling, “are you crazy? What are you doing, chipmunk?”

Girl Person is used to chaos. Ridiculous happenings. So she just kept talking. And by the time she got off her call, she finally asked Boy Person what in the world had happened. He just said for her to come with him. They walked into the barn and Boy Person showed her. A bright colored snake on the barn floor. A snake!

Then, he showed her the hole that the chipmunk made into a door. Then he told her how he spotted the snake, and was trying to figure out what kind of snake it was.

While he was doing that, a chipmunk decided to run thru the hole in the barn and over the snake! He didn’t know that chipmunks were so brave! So very brave to run over a snake!

Then, he saw another snake! A cobra! A cobra? There were cobras in this Georgia place? In the barn? This was truly a debacle.

Boy Person told Girl Person the emergency he had found himself in while she chatted away, ignoring this play out. But as he tried to decide what to do, and not get bit by these snakes, he realized…perhaps…perhaps…there was a trick being played here. With fake snakes.

Yes, as he called our friends to ask if these were indeed fake snakes before he got any closer, his suspicions were confirmed.

The previous owners had put these snakes here to discourage mice from coming in the barn…but they had not thought there would be a brave chipmunk!

Does the chipmunk know that the snakes are not real? We may never know. But we can only imagine that he does not. In fact, we are in awe. In awe of his bravery. Because even if he knows that the snakes are fake now, it would have taken at least one jump on them to realize they were not real. And that was braver than brave.

Sometimes, it is all we can do to jump into a problem. We may just know we will fail in our efforts to solve it. But once we take that leap, we may surprise ourselves with our bravery. You are braver than you know.

You are stronger than you know.

If a chipmunk can jump on a cobra, you can jump on that problem you have been putting off. I know you can do it! Even if it has taken you a long time to face it.