Be careful what you put in your mouth - words to live by

The other night we travelled out to some unidentified part of the city to a restaurant run by one of Da's seemingly infinite number of relatives.  Among other delights we hade snake - yes real snake - a water snake of some kind - not an eel - about 2 feet long and about an inch in diameter choped into half inch segments and fried in the wok.  I ate more than my share and it was very good - most of the bones were crunchy and edible - only a few had to be rejected.  We were eventually left with the head - about 2 inches of malevolent grin - nobody - not even the 4 or 5 Khmer seemed ready to attack that of course they kept on encouraging me - but the eyeballs and teeth just made it impossible.  Eventually Da started to toy with it and break off small pieces - she was about to suck on it - to extract whatever I dont know when she noticed that the fishing hook that had been used to catch the sucker was still in its mouth.  Apologies were profuse from the restauranteur - I can only imagine what would have transpired had I popped the whole thing in my mouth and bitten down - caution paid off.