Snake bites Man? Boring.

On the other hand:

Man Bites Snake in Epic Struggle

. . . Mr Nyaumbe bit the snake on the tip of the tail during the exhausting battle in the village of Sabaki.

Police rescued Mr Nyaumbe and captured the 13ft (4m) reptile, before taking it to a sanctuary, but it later escaped.

The victim told police he managed to reach his mobile phone from his pocket to raise the alarm when the python momentarily eased its grip after hauling him up a tree on Saturday evening.

Mr Nyaumbe used his shirt to smother the snake's head and prevent it from swallowing him.

And that's why I always carry a cell phone. Yeesh.

Late Is Better than Never

This past Thursday's Gospel, John 8:51-59 (Douay-Rheims):

⁵¹ Amen, amen I say to you: If any man keep my word, he shall not see death for ever. ⁵² The Jews therefore said: Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest: If any man keep my word, he shall not taste death for ever. ⁵³ Art thou greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? and the prophets are dead. Whom dost thou make thyself? ⁵⁴ Jesus answered: If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father that glorifieth me, of whom you say that he is your God. ⁵⁵ And you have not known him, but I know him. And if I shall say that I know him not, I shall be like to you, a liar. But I do know him, and do keep his word. ⁵⁶ Abraham your father rejoiced that he might see my day: he saw it, and was glad. ⁵⁷ The Jews therefore said to him: Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? ⁵⁸ Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say to you, before Abraham was made, I am. ⁵⁹ They took up stones therefore to cast at him. But Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple.

Chesterton's take from The Everlasting Man:

Above all, would not such a new reader of the New Testament stumble over something that would startle him much more than it startles us? I have here more than once attempted the rather impossible task of reversing time and the method; and in fancy looking forward to the facts instead of backward through the memories. So I have imagined the monster that man might have seemed at first to the mere nature around him. We should have a worse shock if we really imagined the nature of Christ named for the first time. What should we feel at the first whisper of a certain suggestion about a certain man? Certainly it is not for us to blame anybody who should find that first wild whisper merely impious and insane. On the contrary, stumbling on that rock of scandal is the first step. Stark staring incredulity is a far more loyal tribute to that truth than a modernist metaphysic would make it out merely a matter of degree. It were better to rend our robes with a great cry against blasphemy, like Caiaphas in the judgment, or to lay hold of the man as a maniac possessed of devils like the kinsmen and the crowd, than to stand stupidly debating fine shades of pantheism in the presence of so catastrophic a claim. There is more of the wisdom that is one with surprise in any simple person full of the sensitiveness of simplicity, who should expect the grass to wither and the birds to drop dead out of the air when a strolling carpenter's apprentice said calmly and almost carelessly like one looking over his shoulder: 'Before Abraham was, I am.'

Happy Holy Week, y'all.