Don't be scared of snakes

Let's twist this into a premise for a horror flick. Imagine a being about sixty meters tall. Imagine this person walking down a street leaving squishy red splodges in the places where people weren't quick enough to get away. The army would be around to greet our very tall being with firepower before too long. The snake operates the same way.

Someone posted a comment on the puffadder a few hours ago. Some or other professor said the thing is not really dangerous, that it only strikes when it is attacked. There was a minor media hoo-hah. Someone else I know concurred with the professor. I concur with that someone else and the professor.

Scope this. My mum, a couple of months before the seventies kicked in, pregnant and divorced. In the poisonous estimation of the Dutch Reformed Church and the Christian National Education system, that was wrong, and she was not fit to teach kids. In the bigger scheme of things, she had to be removed from the kids. The museum was a quiet place, and there was an opening in the Reptiles Section, caring for the reptiles.

Sometimes things backfire. For a nature lover, snakes are OK. I got to play with the non-venomous species, as well as hedgehogs. I know from experience that snakes aren't bad. I also know that anyone who calls a snake slimy needs to be introduced to the concepts of accordions and velvet.

Snakes have gotten a bum rap. It's started with the whole thing of the serpent in Eden and just carried on from there, as far as I can tell. So much for allegory as a path to wisdom.

A mole snake is enough to produce hysteria. Mostly, it's a learned thing because people rarely come into contact with snakes and far less are bitten. Children come to fear snakes by hearing it from other children, or from adults.

When do snakes bite? When they are frightened or stepped on.

Let's twist this into a premise for a horror flick. Imagine a being about sixty meters tall. Imagine this person walking down a street leaving squishy red splodges in the places where people weren't quick enough to get away. The army would be around to greet our very tall being with firepower before too long. The snake operates the same way.

Humans know not to get playful, but dogs and cats are a different matter. A lot of people have the danger emphasised to them when they lose pets who got to curious or thought there was a new plaything.

The best way to deal with the danger of snakes is not to step on them or disturb them. I can't think of a single venomous snake large enough or optimistic enough to regard a human as prey.

What about constrictors? They are sluggish, mostly, especially when they have been fed. They are also fairly docile. If you have enough people, you can lift them up. The caveat here is don't wrap a young python around your neck, in case it tries to get comfortable. Even in that case, a bit of fairly rapid unwrapping works wonders.

There are more positive and interesting ways of looking at snakes. Indians play pipes to keep snakes and tourists amused. It turns out that it's not the music that keeps them interested, but the movement of the pipe. And in Africa and many other cultures, snakes are symbols of wisdom. In natural environments, from which snakes are removed, the populations of rodents and other pests boom.

If you haven't yet experienced a snake, look around for a herpetological place where they have snakes on display and will possibly allow you to handle them. It won't take long for you to figure out why snakes fail me as an object of fear.