Snakes in the night time!

So last night I was attacked by a snake whilst in bed - well, sort of!

I was woken at about 3:00 am, by something long and heavy on my neck. Naturally I freaked out, and in a sudden burst of adrenaline I tried to struggle free of this 'thing' squirming over me. Aware that if I grabbed it, it might strike me, I tried to wriggle away from it, but because I was lying under a mosquito net I wasn't able to get it away from next to my body. I realised then that I couldn't move my left arm or my left leg, and immediately thought that I must have been bitten in my sleep, and that the venom was working its way around my body. In my sheer panic and still half-asleep state, I thought to launch myself out of bed in an attemp to escape the venomous monster, flying about 3 meters across my room, head long into my bathroom door frame, tearing the mosquito net from its fitting as I went.

Now on the floor, I could still feel the creature twisted up with me in the mosquito net next to me. Flailing about with my two working limbs, I fought and shouted to get myself free from this bundle of netting, heart now racing at this point that the snake would take one bite of my torso and finish me off. Reaching out with my right hand I evntually tore myself out of the net, dragged myself across the stone floor, and finally lept up on top of my toilet seat to safety.

The ordeal had lasted about 3 minutes by this point, and as my heart rate began to return to normal, I slowly began to get feeling back in my left arm and leg, and I began to believe that I wasn't actually going to die. Using the long wire that had been previously holding my mosquito net to the ceiling, I probed the net from a safe distance, searching for the offending reptile....but it wasn't there!

Five minutes had passed now, and the snake was still no where to be seen?! As I nursed my bruised head in the mirror, I streched and flexed my left arm and leg to check they were in fact still working, and then it slowly dawned on me just exactly what had happened, and what had led me to throw myself, rocketing head first, into my door frame at 3 o'clock in the morning: I must have fallen asleep twisted up in an awkward position, and in doing so, had cut off the circulation to my left arm and leg in my sleep. As I rolled over in my sleep, my dead-arm must have fallen over my face...I hadn't been wresting with a snake at all... I had been fighting with my own arm!!!!!!!!

I had actually tried to throw my own arm out of bed, and when it didn't go anywhere, I had nose-dived myself out of bed to escape it. Like a crazy person, I had actually been fighting my own phantom limb - and lost!

With a sore head, bruised knees and a my mosquito net in a torn heap on the floor, I climbed back into bed. Safe in the knowledge that there were no snakes in my room, and with a big smile on my face, I laughed myself back to sleep.

The morning after the night before - sporting a door-frame shaped bump on my head.