If you suffer from herpetophobia, or fear of reptiles, you should probably stop here. It’s spring; the temperature is rising; and the snakes are crawling. You might not see them, but they see you. They are there – under your house, under your back steps, under your foot.
Snake stories are literally crawling out of the woodwork. I recently read about a man who tried to rob a convenience store in Memphis, adjacent to Elvis’ Graceland, with a five-foot snake as a weapon. He fled when the store operator pulled his own weapon, a 38-caliber pistol. It wasn’t clear what happened to the snake.
On the internet, I saw a warning to be vigilant about copperheads and the arrival of the cicadas this spring. Copperheads love to eat them, and will be all up under the trees, and up in the branches, to eat as many as they can. Keep your children and your pets away from trees and shrubs.
Last week, in India, archaeologists discovered the fossil of a giant snake that might have been longer than a school bus and weighed more than a ton. It stretched an estimated 50 feet long.
In Arizona a few weeks ago, a lady returned to her Tucson home to find a rattle snake had set up camp in her toilet. “I’d been gone for four days and was looking forward to using the restroom in peace. I lifted the lid and he or she was curled up,” she told her local television station. “Thank goodness the lid was closed.” A 20-second video shows the snake being pulled out of the toilet bowl and hissing straight at the camera.
In Stockholm, Sweden, a 7-foot King Cobra, one of the deadliest snakes in the world, escaped from its home in the zoo by slipping through a light fixture at the top of its enclosure. Missing for six days, it finally returned to its terrarium on its own and was apparently awaiting recapture because it was so cold outside. For the record, the deadliest snake in the world is the Black, or black-mouthed Mamba, which lives in the African savannah. It is feared because it is large and fast and possesses potent venom that kills most humans.
When I was a kid, I’d lie up in my bed on winter Saturday nights and listen to Mississippi bluesman, John Lee Hooker (second only to McKinley Morganfield, aka “Muddy Waters,” in my opinion), singing through my window, blasted out from juke boxes in Love Quarters’ juke joints:
Well, I’m a crawling king snake, baby.
Crawl up on your door.
Crawl up to your window, baby.
Crawl up on your floor.
You know I’m a crawling king snake.
You know you caught me crawling, baby.
When the grass was very high.
I’m just gonna keep on crawling now, baby.
Until the day I die.
Because I’m a crawling king snake, baby.
And I rules my den.
(“Crawling King Snake,” 1948)
As I listened, I’d shudder, because I always slept on the back porch during the hot summertime. One night, when I was six or seven, I pulled back my sheet to get in bed, and I was greeted by a big, long King snake who had gotten there before I did. I let him have it. I believe it’s called “eminent domain.” It scared me so bad that I jumped off the porch and ran all the way around the house, in the dark, to the front door.
Why do we instinctively hate snakes? Why is it such a primordial fear? A new study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that humans have a “genetic phobia” of snakes, due partly to a long evolutionary history in which pythons preyed on people. The study draws its conclusions from the Negritos, a tribe of Aboriginal hunter-gatherers in the Philippines. I’ve had some experience with this minority group – short in statue, fiercely proud, and generally taken advantage of. I used to stop and buy their handcrafts at stands they set up along the jungle roadside.
Other studies have shown that humans are adept at spotting snakes, even when they are hidden. One explanation is that the amygdala, a small brain region that handles fear response, reacts to seeing a snake even before it has cognitively processed the image. In other words, we can fear a snake even before we know it’s there. This would have been a very handy response for early humans living in a primitive world.
The Bible is not very kind to snakes. They are often presented as the personification of evil. In addition to the well-known story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, snakes are also identified with Satan as in Revelation 12:9: “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan;” the book of Amos (9:3) refers to a serpent who resides at the bottom of the sea; and Numbers 21:4-9 talks of the “burning serpents” who infested the terrible place of the desert wilderness. On the other hand, the adherents of snake handling in religious services point to texts such as Luke 10:19 to justify the practice: “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing by any means shall hurt you.” Also, for some, the figure of Goliath, as in David and Goliath, is a serpent figure, representing evil. He wears “scale” armor (1 Samuel 17:5); he loses his head, the way you kill a snake; and he dies in the dust, on his belly, reminiscent of Genesis 3:14: “And the Lord God said unto the serpent, because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly thou shalt go, and dust thou shalt eat all the days of thy life.”
In Greek mythology, Medusa was described as a woman with living snakes in place of hair. Her appearance was so hideous that anyone who looked at her was instantly turned into stone. She was mortal, however, and the hero, Perseus, beheaded her and used her head, which had retained its stone-turning power, as a weapon against his enemies. Her head, with its serpentine curls, is a common image in art and leads one to think about recent movies where snakes played a significant part. For example, in at least one of the popular Harry Potter movies, he is pursued relentlessly by a giant basilisk or snake whose gaze could turn Harry to stone. In Greek mythology, basilisks were much less formidable creatures, being described as “a snake, a lizard, with rooster-like features, often accompanied by reptilian tail, plumage, the front legs of a rooster, and scaly wings.” Early in the Potter book series, the “house” that he didn’t want the “Sorting Hat” to pick for him was “Slytherin.”
For some serious cinematic snakes, you need to watch Samuel L. Jackson deal with “Snakes on a Plane” (2006) where all kinds of deadly snakes are slithering down the aisles, dropping down from the overhead storage bins, and shutting down the mid-flight movies while the anti-venom is thousands of miles away. Uma Thurman also does a great job dealing with the “deadly Black Mamba” in Quinton Tarantino’s “Kill Bill, Volume 1” (2003) in a New Mexico desert house trailer; and Harrison Ford always seems to end up in a “nest” of vipers in his “Indiana Jones” movies (“Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?”).
No less than the Bard himself, William Shakespeare, used serpentine imagery to speak of a character’s malevolent traits. In the play, “MacBeth” (1606) Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth tries to convince her husband to murder Duncan which she believes is Macbeth’s only path to the crown. She tells him: “To beguile the time, look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye, in your hand, your tongue. Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it.” That serpent is evil ambition.
The noted psychologist, Sigmund Freud, of course, weighed in on snakes, saying that “male sexual symbols in dreams are snakes, reptiles, and fish. The meaning of snakes in dreams is associated with sexuality, as an extension of the male figures in life, or how one experiences his own manhood.” Well, I’m not much of a psychologist, and certainly not a herpetologist, but I’ve had some experiences with snakes, as we all have. In addition to finding one in my bed, I saw some pretty nasty ones in Vietnam. I always checked my boots carefully before I put them on – for scorpions as well as snakes. I was also jogging one morning in Guam and a big snake fell out of a palm tree and landed across my shoulders. Guam originally had no native snakes, but they came in by sea in shipping crates, and now they’ve eaten most the birds.
In the Philippines, they used to tell us about the “Three-Step Snakes,” bamboo vipers that were often found in the cups on the golf course. Unsuspecting, golfers would reach in to get the ball, get bitten, take three steps, and die. (I didn’t know whether to believe it or not, but I never went golfing). In Hong Kong, several snakes died to make the “tailormade” snakeskin boots that I still have today. And once I bought a stuffed King Cobra made into a doorstop in Bangkok, but I knew it wouldn’t pass through Customs when the ship got back to California, so I threw it over the side as we entered port. I also had a Commanding Officer in the Marines, the best one I ever had, who was “as mean as a snake.” Today, I have a belt made of a rattlesnake hide. I ran over it while driving a school bus. I didn’t mean to hit it, as I’m a turtle mover and a squirrel dodger, but it was too big to get completely out of the road. Since I didn’t have any kids onboard, I retrieved it and had it made into a belt by a gentleman in Bellevue.
Mississippi is “blessed” with at least 47 different kinds of snakes. Of these, six are venomous: copperheads, water moccasins, pygmy rattlesnakes, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, timber rattlesnakes, and coral snakes. Although I have seen the others, I have never seen a coral snake. I’m not much of an outdoorsman, having received my fill of trekking through the woods with Uncle Sam. You might say I got sick of the flora when the fauna started shooting back. I do know the little coral snake warning mnemonic, however: “Red touch yellow, kill a fellow.” As far as that goes, I never saw an armadillo in the woods growing up, either. I think they crept up from Texas with the fire ants. I do know this. They are hard to catch. I tried once, and it jumped about six feet straight up as I attempted to grab it.
A venomous snake injects venom, a poison (toxic) into the victim’s body. The bite can cause serious injury, and rare cases, it can be fatal. Depending on the snake and the amount of venom injected, bites can cause paralysis that may prevent breathing, bleeding disorder that can lead to a fatal hemorrhage, irreversible kidney failure, and permanent tissue damage. According to the Center for Disease Control, about 8,000 snakebites happen in the United States each year. Even a bite from a harmless snake can cause infection or allergic reaction in some people. For your safety, all snakebites should be treated as if they were venomous. Seek medical attention immediately. Do not wait for symptoms to appear. If possible, take a photo of the snake with your phone so it can be identified. Never try to catch the snake.
There are many myths about snakes. Most, however, are in the categories of “Old Wives’ Tales” or urban legends. For example, you often hear that a rattle snake can strike as far as its length. That’s not true. A snake can strike up to a distance between 1/3 to 1/2 of its body length. Another myth is that snakes travel in pairs. Wrong again. If they did, the big one would always eat the little one. Other myths are: rattle snakes will always rattle before they strike (Wrong.); a bowl of milk will attract snakes (They are actually hunting rats in the barn.); snakes are deaf (Although they lack ears, they possess inner ears and are able to pick up ground-borne vibrations and also low frequency airborne sounds.); snakes are out to get you (When you encounter a snake, it is usually caught off guard; had rather run away at up to 12 miles an hour and will turn and defend itself as a last resort).
The blues singer, John lee Hooker, ruled his “den,” and actor Harrison Ford had his phobia about “nests of snakes. Did you ever notice how we have these “collective nouns of multitude,” many of which are deeply imbedded in our language despite being several hundred years old? Most are benign: a “gaggle “of geese, a “school” of fish, a “litter” of puppies, a “flock” of sheep; but some, not so much: a “pack” of wolves, a “pride” of lions, a “cackle” of hyenas, a “murder” of crows, or a “pit” of snakes.
In the Woody Harrelson movie, “Natural Born Killers” (1994), Native American activist turned actor Russell Means’ character is a snake-handling shaman. Foreshadowing his death at the hands of Harrelson and his girlfriend; while in a drug induced trance; and holding a large rattlesnake, he tells a simplified version of an age-old Aesop fable: “An old woman came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek. As she lay dying, she asked the snake, ‘Why have you done this to me?’ And the snake answered, ‘Look, woman, you knew I was a snake when you picked me up. What did you expect?”
Other than being careful, my philosophy about snakes is “live and let live:” “all creatures great and small” – unless, of course, I find another one in my bed.
Light a candle for me.
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Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
