A Rattlesnake At Eve’s Library

Wednesday Ginny & I spent a delightful evening with Eve, our middle daughter who is head librarian in a tiny rural community west of Jacksonville.

She filled us in on some of her latest adventures:

For instance, the other night a reader entering Eve’s library announced that a rattlesnake lay blocking the door.

Ever the reference librarian, Eve consulted her leadership training manual. Humm. No listing for rattlesnakes in the index.

One patron helpfully mentioned he had a pistol in his glove compartment but the snake lurked between the main entrance and the parking lot. Besides, although it is a rural library, Eve discourages guns in her reading room.

Fortunately a local fireman was browsing for books. He found a shovel and went out to do battle with the reptile. This was brave indeed because a Putman County fireman was killed by a rattlesnake just last Monday.

But by the time the fireman got outside, the snake was gone… Somewhere.

I’ve never heard of this before and I have no idea if it works, but the fireman told Eve to sprinkle moth balls around the library entrance because rattlesnakes are territorial and will leave the area at the scent of mothballs. He also told her that the library ought to stock a “snake killing shovel” for her staff to use.

Eve plans to request a snake shovel and 50 pounds of mothballs in her next supply requisition to county headquarters. I wonder what the accounting department will make of that.

Oh those wild and crazy librarians!

Since her library building is brand new construction, the builders dug a retention pond near the entrance. The other day as she was conducting a meeting to discuss library programs for teens, a little kid walked by the picture window with a fish dangling from a bamboo pole. He’d been fishing in the library retention pond and caught a few sunfish.

Immediately the teens (who ride to the library on ATVs) suggested that the library sponsor a community fishing contest right there in the pond.

Eve is scheduling the event.

Last week Eve took some vacation days and went camping in the wilds of west Florida. She also went cave exploring. Yes, Florida does have caves.

She is posting some photos she took on Eve’s Blog.

Strange to think of our little girl as combating snakes, camping in the deep woods by herself and exploring caves. Eve was always the quiet, timid, shy, demure one. She is the most gentle fawn of a girl, yet incredibly adventurous and brave. She’s the one who won the scholarship to London and traveled all over Europe by herself. She has also ventured into the (to me) terrifying realm of on-line dating.

She’s the one who participates in virtually every charity walk for MS, MD, Heart Association, Birth Defects, Cancer Society… anything that touches her tender heart.

Ginny & I are so pleased with her.

Eve does keep cats…

But then nobody’s perfect.

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During our usual prayer time after supper, Ginny read this beautiful prayer which I’d never even noticed before:

Almighty and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and art willing to give us more than we either ask or deserve; Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, And giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask execpt through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.