This Monday past was the first day back of term for the kids after two weeks holiday. As you can imagine Monday morning wasn’t a very cheerful time in our house!
Luckily for Number 1 son his teacher is wonderful, and she had bought a treasure in for him that completely changed his day.
Knowing what an animal lover he is, and that he is very interested in unusual things*, she had bought in a snake skin her family had uncovered in some of their travels.
Before you start thinking they were delighting in dead bodies, don’t worry. It wasn’t a skin that the snake was forcibly parted from, it was one that was happily shed!
When I wandered in to pick the kids up that afternoon Number 1 and his mate J bustled up, clutching a small plastic bag and absolutely bursting to show me the prize that was folded carefully inside. Clearly the trauma of returning to school was completely forgotten!
Amazing how such a small gesture can make a persons day isn’t it 😀
*And, really, just the fact that he is a twelve-year-old boy. There aren’t too many twelve-year-old boys out there who wouldn’t think a snake skin was cool, even if it was just to poke it with a stick from a safe distance. 😀
Buried words and Bushwa. 
That is a very special teacher 🙂 What a great gift for Number 1. Not for me though, not even if it was in the form of a handbag…
It was just lovely of her. Doing something like that has completely changed the way he felt about going back to school. A boy on the threshold of teenagerhood needs all the help he can get! 😀
Amen. -shudder-
The start of a fabulous school year!
🙂 It certainly changed the mood!
In Australia our school year starts in February so the shine is already well off the excitement of seeing their friends and getting a new classroom. 😉
Nothing makes a boy happier or (most) mothers/grandmothers unhappier than a snake skin. I speak from personal experience.
😀 I can imagine that my mum would have been totally horrified if I’d ever bought one home from school. She would have been “Oooh, that’s interesting!” on the outside but on the inside she would have been screaming “Get that out of my house!!”. I am sure some terrible ‘accident’ would have befallen it in very short order. 😀
We used to find quite a few of these laying around in the yard. Plus a number of “live” ones.
Discarded skins = interesting.
Live snakes in garden = AAAAARRGGHH!!!!!
Just ran across this and thought of you 😛 : http://thepracticalhistorian.wordpress.com/2012/08/15/swimming-in-human-infested-water/
😀 MORE sharks!!
I would add to the “don’t wear yum yum yellow” and say you should also avoid wetsuits in the colour Delicious Seal Black!
I’ve never seen a shed snakeskin before so this was kind of… interesting. I knew a guy back in my uni days who had a pet snake – just a tiny little thing about the size of a fat shoestring. I did play with said shoestring and it wasn’t too bad but… a wild one? Thanks but no thanks.
I am pleased for No.1 though. I just hope this doesn’t inspire him to ask for a live one. 😉
He doesn’t need any encouragement! He is saving up for one, or a Bearded Dragon, but I doubt he will ever get enough dosh together. Each time the funds start getting serious something else attracts his attention! I don’t mind a pet snake, it is the poisonous ones that worry me and I know he will never want one of them… 🙂
I find shed skins very interesting. When we were in Alice Springs we took the kids to the reptile centre and inside they had the large fork of a tree as a bit of appropriate decor. The fork was draped with skins which I guess were from all of their animals. I couldn’t begin to imagine how many skins were there. So many, that you would have had to wrap both arms around to pick it up!
To me, non-poisonous pet snakes are like mice – I like them but not in the house! Then again I said I would never get attached to fish and now I check on my fishies every night so perhaps I shouldn’t make too many bold statements!
I wonder if that tree fork was the only place suitable as a scratching post for those captive snakes? Or did the staff collect all the shed skins and just display them there??
I really, really want to get to Alice Springs one day.
I know what you mean. we make sure that the chooks are safely locked away if there is even the slightest chance we won’t be home before dark. If you had suggested earlier that we would schedule our evenings around a bunch of chickens I would never had believed it!
By the way the tree at the reptile centre looked it had been placed there purely for a place to drape the collected skins.
Alice Springs is worth a visit but is a strange place. It is like two separate towns sharing the same place at the same time without ever interacting. A collision of space and time but without the resultant cosmic explosion!
Now you have me completely intrigued. I must go there before my teeth fall out and I need one of those walker things. 🙂
It is an interesting place but, you know, has all kinds of social problems that we don’t get in our quiet liitle towns. It is the only place I have been to where the Coles has had (and needed) security guards. 😦
Security guards? Ouch. 😦