It was Sunday morning, everyone was preparing to go to Church. Mom (my mother) is not left out; in fact, she is the chief coordinator of all activities here at home – the reality of a poor widow with plenty of mouths to feed. Mom called out to everyone, "Prepare, else we'll all be late to church."

It was the first Sunday, and service was usually held at our parish, St. Alban, not in our local station St. Joseph, where we could stroll in in less than 45 minutes. St. Alban was several kilometers from home, and as such, fewer people from distant stations with means of mobility could afford attending service.

Worship at St. Alban was always a captivating experience as worshipers danced to the melodious symphony of the choir. The instruments were modern and, of course, sophisticated with a well-selected team of professionals to deliver the best sound to everyone's satisfaction.

As a child, everything was beautiful to behold, from the spectacle of the instrumentalists, vocalists, mass servants, other priests, and the chief celebrant. The ritualistic and orderly fashion of the Eucharistic celebration added hue to every encounter in St. Alban's parish. It was beautiful, and the memories still linger till date. It forms part of the motivation for my ambition to join the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church.

My response to mom's call was not encouraging, which led to her leaving me behind. I had my own plans, which were to meet up with friends who also couldn't go to church for whatever reasons and next, proceed to the stream, swim, and later come back home to continue the next phase of our adventure – to go hunting for bush rats. At the turn of events, my friend's mom had tasked my friend to look after his three brothers because of distance while she went to church at St. Alban. Among his brothers was a one-year-plus, the youngest of them.

Burdened with these, he suggested we change our initial plan and instead go hunting for bush rats. It is known that bush rats are nocturnal animals, live in holes or rock crevices, and can also live in abandoned places or even holes dug by other rodents. They hide in the holes during the day to consume whatever food they are able to gather during the night, and this makes it easy for them to be targeted during the day.

"Let's go there!" He pointed to a nearby bush opposite our home, a fairly harvested cassava farm. We immediately sprang into action as a team of hunters without proper weapons, except a broken hoe and some fragile sticks that can barely kill an ant, but we had one thing in common that was more than any weapon – our minds.

"Come here, Don," he called. I turned, facing his direction, he pointed, "here, see!" His voice shaking, with a brighter countenance and a sense of fulfillment – a medium-sized rat hole, the entrance to the hole graced with fresh evidence of what seemed like a family of rats. We tapped each other's shoulder, a sign of 'we've made it.'

Inspired by this presumed evidence and fueled by curiosity, my friend Faby, who was more experienced in searching for bush rats, dropped his younger brother to the watch of his little brother Grace, aged three-plus just inches away from the hole. He started the digging while requesting a longer stick to pass through the hole with hope that whatever is inside would come out, and we could kill it or them, depending on their number. I quickly went to get the best I could with the expectation of an equal share of whatever may be caught.

"Come o! Don, I've touched it, yesss!" I swiftly turned to his direction; his right hand was completely buried in the hole, his two knees sunk in the hip of sand he dug while lowering his head to the level with the ground as if taking pulse or listening to the heartbeats of the rats.

He exclaimed, "I can feel it, we're lucky," he continued. Out of curiosity, I offered to help, "let me help you, perhaps I can also feel the rats with my bare hands." I took the hoe and dug further with mixed feelings of what these rats could be doing now as humans are pounding on their home. I was confused, so I took a break to observe, like my friend, what they felt like. Then my friend came to guide, "no, not that way, put your hand gently and twist it towards the left-hand side, and you will feel their soft and smooth belly." I stretched my hand further, my heart pounding, my head swelled with a rare curiosity to touch the bush rats for the first time – an achievement many children can only dream of. My hand is stuck on something; I don't know how I should feel; I have never touched a rat before and do not have any idea of what it should feel like.

I immediately screamed, "yes, yes, yes, I can feel it now. It's very smooth, feels cold to touch, and seems motionless, though pulsating." Tension mixed with curiosity elevated my adrenaline rush. "Let's do it," my friend motioned to me. We were more determined to dig out the rats from the hole anyhow, more so because we touched and felt something – a living thing inside the hole.

"Let me continue digging while you watch out for any eventualities; if they jump out, kill them all, after all, they're all blind during the day," so I was told, I added. After digging another one foot by my gaze, I stopped to observe again just how close we were to our fortune. There my hand grabbed something that felt different from my imagination of a bush rat. I struggled with it before calling out to my friend, "Come, Faby, see, I've got it." I dragged it slowly towards my heart; the kids kept playing and observing closely as Faby positioned for a combat mode – to kill anything or everything was our plan.

Then I saw something strange; it unfolded like a coil and looked different. We screamed and ran in different directions, but the kids were surprised and quickly joined the chorus. They cried and stamped their feet as they couldn't run. I only dragged out half of its body and for fear ran away. However, my friend and I became confused and so terrified that we forgot about our safety and that of the little ones and went straight to attack the yet-to-be-known animal gradually coming out from the hole. I used the tip of the broken hoe to slide into the revealed part of what we could see untangling itself rapidly to respond to an attack on its life. Suddenly, our hearts could not bear what our eyes beheld. The battle took another turn as we shivered and shook while fighting back with sticks, our broken hoe, and even our flip-flop, as if saying "we will fight to the last drop of our blood." I don't remember how we did it, but somehow, we quickly overpowered it and dragged the remaining part out. It was a venomous snake of about six-plus feet – what I now know to be a Puff Adder, a large thick-bodied extremely venomous African viper.

Heart-wrenching as it was, we managed to drag the dead viper out to the street where passersby, on sight of it, scampered for their lives, to our
delight. Other youngsters held us as heroes for being able to overpower such a poisonous snake, and from that day, I learnt my lessons, never to search for bush rats, nor embark on frivolous adventures without mommy's permission.Till date, I still owe my mother the tale of our reckless adventure.

© Aquilo-Dominic G. Udo