(Heyyy – I know this is different from what I usually post here, but I just wanted to tell you this lol)

Alright. Gather around, all of you – I shall tell you the story behind this cryptic message that the people in my neighbourhood sometimes scream to each other.

Now, imagine this.

You have a dog.

Not just a normal dog, a very...very...

Never mind. The dog in the picture here is Maya – or rather, the princess of her household here.

And you know royalty – they have the right to reject the food their faithful servants have cooked for them. They have their preferences, they have their choices, yes, yes. And we must take note of them as we prepare their meals.

Well.

Such was the case in our household – and the favourite of the princess of our household?

Curd rice. (It's a native dish, and when we doggy – fy the dish, it becomes cooked rice mixed with curd. Dogs can't eat what humans can – duh)

So one fateful afternoon, we discover that our supply of curd has been exhausted.

And since my grandfather and his motorbike were not available at that moment (he was sleeping), we, the two most faithful servants of her highness, Maya (meaning me and my grandmother) decided to feed her something else.

You guessed right – her majesty refused to even sniff the food, and simply turned her back on us and returned to her throne.

Well.

At this moment, I, being the lazy and foreseeing oaf I am, tried to slip off inside the house before my grandmother could –

"Jaanu – I want you to go and buy some things for me from the store on the corner".

Great.

Fine. Anything for her highness.

I change into better clothes (*scoff*), take the small stash of money I require to finish my errand, and set off.

Now, let me divert your attention elsewhere for a few seconds.

The place where my grandmother's house is located is a very rural sort of are – there's a field right behind our house, for one. Also, there's a lot of trees, bushes and shrubbery blah blah blah so yeah. Also, we lived within a colony of other streets and houses, so there's a lot of streets and one main street that leads you to the main road (This is the Forbidden Zone, as technically I'm not supposed to go there.) There's ANOTHER street, which is basically a clone of the main street but it's 'safe' for me as it's not connected to the main road and instead joins all the mini streets. Let's call this street the Inside street.

So. There's a lot of wild over here.

And where there's wilderness, there's stuff that lives in the wilderness.

Including mongoose.

And you know what's here if mongoose are here...

That's right. Slithering, sneaky, creepy crawlies.

In other words, snakes.

Okay. Now that that's said, let me introduce you to another very, very ferocious, dangerous animal I have personal experience with.

Squash dog.

Yeah, yeah. I know, I'm crazy. But there's this one Pomeranian living here that terrifies me.

And it has the most squashed up face of any dog I've ever seen in my life. Like it's not a pug. A tiny Pomeranian. But with an attitude and a squashed up face.

It's tiny – not even the size of my arm.

But ferocious. It's a monster, I'm telling you. Stay. Away from it.

Unfortunately for me, its lair is on the exact same street that the shop I need to get to – in other words, its owners live there. And their house is RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE SHOP. Which means I have to put my safety at stake and cross this psychopathic creature whenever I need to get to the store.

So I stand there – at the very beginning of the street, locked in a staring contest with this thing. I look straight at it, it looks straight at me. Neither of us make a move. It's a scene from an action movie – only the ruffian here is a rat sized dog and the sheriff is an exhausted girl who's too tired to make a break for it if the dog decides that she needs to go on a marathon back home.

Oh, and there's no guns or anxious women with bonnets staring in through nearby windows. Nope. The sheriff just carries some cash in her hand.

So guess what the sheriff did.

She turned right around, took the next street, walked from there to the main street, used the main street to get on the other side of the shop, made her purchase, used street number two to get back on the inside street again, and started walking home.

(This is how much I'm willing to do to not encounter Squash dog)

So. I'm heading back home, and guess what?

I see my grandma standing at the end of this street, waiting to tell me off for taking unnecessary detours and getting on the main street. So I explain to her the valiant truth as we approach our house, ignoring her scoffs and remarks of "That dog? Pfft – it won't even be able to come near you", where she completely ignores the severity of the situation.

Just as our house comes into view, I notice something – the gate is open.

Huh, I think.

AND THEN I SEE SOMETHING BLACK AND SKINNY VANISH INSIDE THE COMPOUND OF THE HOUSE, RIGHT BEFORE WE'RE ABOUT TO ENTER IT.

I plant my feet hard into the ground and stop.

"Ammachi", I say. "Is Maya loose or chained?"

"Of course she's chained."

"NOPE SHE'S NOT – I JUST SAW MAYA'S TAIL. DON'T GO IN. DO NOT GO IN."

"What nonsense are you talking about?"

Now I shall give you an account of what was happening in my mind at that moment. You see, I'm known for being a paranoid over thinker, and I'm made fun of a lot. So of course.

When I saw the black, slithery tail – looking object vanish into the house, my first thought was, Since when do dog's tails sit flat on the ground and slither like that?

And then my common sense said, Nooo you idiot – that's not a dog's tail! That's a sna –

I cut it off. Of course it must be Maya's tail – it should be – because if I assume it's something else, of course it will be wrong. It should just be Maya deciding to sit flat on the ground and drag her butt across it so that her tail looks like it's slithering –

But as you know, your common sense is very strong, so it froze my footsteps and made me back away slowly. It also made me ask my grandmother if Maya was set loose.

And when she said know, I subconsciously began to panic – and that was precisely why I began to back away. By now, I decided to listen to my common sense.

Listen. You are not overthinking. That thing is a snake. Don't go in. Tell your grandmother, "Ammachi, there's a snake there."

But even though I realised that there was in fact a snake in there, I still wanted to be on the safe side, just in case it WAS Maya dragging her butt across the ground.

So I said, "NOPE SHE'S NOT – I JUST SAW MAYA'S TAIL. DON'T GO IN. DO NOT GO IN".

And my grandmother just stares back at me in the purest confusion.

But put yourself in my shoes. You've been teased and made fun of for YEARS for overthinking stuff and seeing stuff that's not actually there – but you think you just saw something dangerous. Your heart says so. Your mind says so. Your common sense screams so.

And yet, you want to remain on the safe side, and decide to speak in a warning manner, while uttering the purest nonsense.

Luckily for everyone, my grandmother knew enough about me to understand that, even if I was saying utter gibberish, Maya's tail would have NOT made me stop so abruptly like that. Neither would it make me back away and simply refuse to enter the gate.

So she slowly walks toward the gate, peeks in very, veeeerrry slowly, before pulling away and screaming that one dreaded word –

"SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

And at that moment, I was at peace. I had not made a fool out of myself. My common sense was right.

Yes.

The next second, I dive back into reality, realising that well – there's a snake in our house. Yay. I spotted it. I'm supposed to be terrified but I'm dreamily grinning to myself like an idiot. My expression of pure bliss is replaced with a blank one, and I watch as my grandmother panics.

Her screams attract my grandfather from inside the house, and he stupidly holds the door widely open for the snake to sneak in while asking us if we were out of our minds.

My grandmom explains, and he tells us in a calm tone to simply open both gates and let the now trapped snake escape.

At this point I snap back into attention – when I realise that Maya is outside, within the compound walls, but not inside the house. Which meant the snake could attack her and we couldn't do anything about it.

So I panic, but no one pays any attention to me.

My grandmom opens both gates and stands back.

We see the snake seeming looking over at the open gates and stand back, hoping it would just pass.

But our bro decides to pull a classic move – one that I shall never forget.

He slithers past all of us, ignoring us, and simply jumps over our compound and into the next house.

And that, my men, was the day I learnt that snakes could jump.

Then all hell breaks loose – we're safe now (more importantly, Maya is safe now) but our dude is now chilling out inside the compound of the next house.

So now my grandmom's panic level increases and she starts frantically screaming the name of the people living there (we're pretty friendly with them).

THEY DON'T HEAR.

So my Ammachi quickly does something so typical of her – she simply picks up a stone and chucks it at their window (which does not break but creates a loud sound) and the lady of the house opens the window, ready to yell at us, before she looks down at her patio and notices Mr. Maya's Tail casually chilling over there.

Then she screams "SNAKE!! SNAKE IN THE HOUSE!!"

And her daughter goes "AAAAAHHHH – SCOOBY!! WE NEED TO SAVE SCOOBY!!"

This daughter, you see is older than me and goes to college. And yet, her concerns were not about there being a snake in the house, but about their spoilt, fat family dog. And boy, she was really panicking.

Then a couple of other neighbours come over – and all of them suggest the same thing my gramps suggested: Open the gate, and he'll be on his way.

So we opened their gate, which was much bigger than ours. By this time our bro decided he's had enough with all of us and nopes out of there and straight into the forested area, and just before he disappears under the shrubbery, we catch a fleeting glimpse of him.

Sleek, black, and shiny. Really, really long – he almost measured out the width of the road.

And from the looks of it, he was VENOMOUS. Dude was totally chill though, got out of there as politely as he could. He has my respect.

And to this day, everyone living on our street still calls snakes "Maya's tail". I don't know why they found the term useful – it just kind of stuck.

That is all.