The Snake in the Kindergarten

Yesterday when Dani came home from the gan (hebrew for Kindergarten), he told us that there was a snake in the garden of the gan. And Dovi said that a snake catcher was giving out cards at the door.

We asked him to explain exactly if someone brought a snake for demonstration or if there was a snake in the garden and the teacher brought someone to catch it. He insisted on his story that they found a snake in the garden. But only a small one - that's what he said!

You know that poisonous vipers have already at birth enough poison to kill - especially a child. A few times we had poisonous vipers in the garden of our old house. Most of them grown out ones. That's quite scary.
Probably the most scary moment I had with a snake was when I was 9 months pregnant with Daniel: Dov was already sleeping at night, and suddenly Shed our dog started barking in the garden. Barefoot I went out into the dark - you could barely see anything - when I saw Shed about a meter away from a big snake barking at it. Without even thinking (like automatically) I ran to Shed and screamed for him to go away. These few moments took like forever. Shed even went closer to the snakes head and barked more. (He always in all kinds of situations feels more confident when one of us is nearby...) I just grabbed him (don't forget that I was pregnant..) and dragged him with me. By then Dovi also woke up and came out. But in those few seconds that I explained what just had happened, we lost track of the snake and it disappeared. Thanks G-d that we were all safe. And the next morning a snake catcher came and searched our garden for a few hours until he found two snakes: the one poisonous we met the night before and a long black non poisonous snake. He took them both with him and I think released them somewhere safe where nobody gets harmed.

So to clear the situation with Dani and the gan, Dovi asked in the morning the teacher what really had happened. It turns out, Dani just had to much imagination. They had just a demonstration from a snake catcher with a small snake (the one thing he was right) and a frog. That's why Dani got that card from the snake catcher, like an advertisement.

It shows that a 4 year old sometimes mixes up reality and imagination. But that's just normal.