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I
bought several six-inch plastic snakes at a novelty shop once because
they looked so real. I took one to the office where I worked and put it
in the desk drawer of a lady co-worker. She came to work the next
morning and proceeded with her normal routine; went to get a cup of
coffee, turned her office light on in her office, placed her coffee cup
on her desk then sat down and opened the desk drawer where she kept her
writing pen. She let out a scream that sounded like the squeak of a very
loud barn door hinge. She cut up the snake with a pair of scissors and
paid me back with a prank of her own.
I
gave it a couple of days and put another fake snake in the same drawer.
I got the exact same reaction. I waited a few weeks; same reaction. It
was like a twisted science experiment.
An
older couple who lived near us when I was young were also afraid (more
like terrified) of snakes and would telephone in a hyperventilated tizzy
for one of us to "quick, come with a hoe!" We’d go over
there with a hoe (as a prop to ease their minds) and catch the snake for
release on the far side of our little chicken house where they couldn’t
see us. We’d tell them that the snake’s head had been chopped clean
from its body and both parts thrown in the burn pile. I’m sure we
caught the same snake from their house on more than one occasion.
When
my brother and I were growing up, there were no laws about children
riding in the back of pick-up trucks and that was our perch of choice
when going for Sunday rides during the warmer months. It was not
uncommon for us to be catapulted to the front of the bed when Pops would
slam on the breaks and slide the truck in the gravel to a stop. He’d
then jump out of the already opened door and run in an attempt to catch
"Mr. Nolegs"…and he usually did. He kept a croaker sack
behind the truck seat just for such occasions. He did this to keep the
rat population down around where we stored corn for feeding the banties.
By the time I was a teenager it wasn’t uncommon to walk around our
small piece of property and see blue (black) runners, grass snakes, king
snakes or a snake I finally attracted to my own yard.
A
couple of months ago, I found a shedded snake skin next to our herbs
just off of the back deck. A few weeks ago, I saw the one-time owner of
the skin, an eighteen-inch garter snake sliding into the monkey grass
not far from where I’d found the skin. This past weekend I was moving
some planks for a fence I’m building and found him/her wrapped up on
itself, eyes white in the early stages of another molt. I picked it up
and put it where I thought the cat wouldn’t bother it.
Garter
snakes are perfectly harmless and great to have around to eat rodents or
for that occasional adrenaline boost you get when, as you sit in a lawn
chair sipping tea, one slowly oscillates over your sandal. Sadly, they
are thrown with other snakes into the animal kingdom’s
"evil" category because a serpent was part of the equation
that got Adam and Eve chunked out of Eden. Why aren’t apples so
maligned?
I
believe it’s ridiculous to think humans have an instinctive fear of
snakes; it’s taught to our young, not inherited. This fear stems from
people being unlearned about the elemental biology of these reptiles.
There are around forty-five so called "good" species of snakes
in Alabama and six poisonous species. We all need to learn the
difference. True, they’re scaly, legless, earless, usually room
temperature, slithering critters that can’t blink because they don’t
have eyelids. But, regardless of their alien physical characteristics
and lack of hug equity, they have a place in the ecosystem and
"good" snakes should be appreciated and encouraged in the
landscape along with birds and butterflies.
I
knew a man, named Jabo, who was more scared of snakes than anyone I’ve
ever known. He sold all of his laying hens because his wife thought she
saw a snake in the chicken coop. He’d shot the bottom out of his
Johnboat while frog gigging when he thought a snake had fallen in with
him. Most recently he’d broken his arm when he dove from a moving
tractor pulling a disc after seeing a snake in a field. He lost sight of
the snake and imagined that it had climbed onto the machine with him.
Tractor and all went into an irrigation ditch. A friend and I went to
see him at his house shortly after the accident to get his account of
the story.
Though
on several occasions Jabo had encountered giant hog nose and coach whip
snakes near the field he had been working, it seems the monster that had
attempted to do him harm that day was none other than a feared sharkjaw.
This
breed of snake can get much larger than its aforementioned cousins (up
to twenty feet and as big around as a grown sow), but the one he saw was
just a yearling and not much longer than a car. According to this
armchair herpetologist, a sharkjaw can charm squirrels and rabbits and
has been known to hypnotize men with their raised, swaying heads and
glowing red eyeballs. Half way through the description of the beast we
had to stop and let him have a glass of water and another nerve pill. He
said a sharkjaw has a barbed, poisonous stinger at the end of his tail.
Every
so often you’d see a dead tree in the woods for no apparent reason and
Jabo swore that that’s where one of these snakes tried to gig a rabbit
or deer and missed, killing the tree. They can also spit green, stinking
slime that can burn your skin off or blind you. He said that the only
way to kill a sharkjaw snake is to sneak up on it and chop it up with an
ax. But then you have to burn its remains or otherwise it will put
itself back together.
He
told us that the disc had to have gotten him because he didn’t see him
roll off. You see, when alarmed, a sharkjaw can bite the end of his
tail, make like a bicycle wheel and roll off.
That
Jabo…sometimes I wonder if his head might whistle in a cross wind.
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