Papa, Snake & I

This story was a little hard for me to understand. "Papa, Snake & I", is a story about a family whose son becomes transfixed with a snake that lives in the families chicken coop. I understood the story, the snake bites the neighbors dog, who dies, and the neighbor becomes enraged and insists that he be paid some type of compensation. I found myself wanting to yell at the kid to kill the snake when he has the opportunity rather than to allow it to attack and kill the dog. If a snake came near my dog I would throw myself across then yard to protect her! I thought it was weird that the mother kept insisting that the son take a laxative..I was wondering if this was considered a "cure" for an imagined illness or something along those lines? Also, I was confused as to the references that were made towards the hired help, a young woman named Sartina. At one point she is not dressed appropriately and then she is flirting with other young men who works with her. These references just seemed out of place and I was not quite sure how they fit in to the big picture of the story. Overall I understood the story, but I felt like I couldn't form the whole picture to grasp the larger message.