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mfinley.com "Serpent" There was an unusual commotion in our house Tuesday morning. Daniele's 4-foot boa constrictor, named Crimson, was loose in her bedroom, and a search was underway to find her. She (Crimson) eventually turned up underneath the bed, and it was quite an armful to persuade her to return to her glass case.
Now, you will note my use of pronouns. I was not personally involved in the snake search. I am afraid of Crimson. I have helped Daniele with minor snake ablutions, and each time I have felt how alien the snake seems compared to the dog -- how beyond warmth and wagging and monkeyshines she is. And when she grips me around the neck and chest and squeezes, as is her wont, I feel the air -- and the life -- going out of me. It takes me back to my days as a zookeeper, in 1967. I was a high school senior working the summer at a mini-zoo in an amusement park, Jungle Larry's Safari Island at Cedar Point, in Sandusky, Ohio. Jungle Larry was a kids' show Frank Buck -- I guess he actually knew Frank Buck -- who amassed about 1,000 animals, from lions and elephants to monkeys, at this roadside attraction. My job was to do whatever needed doing -- rake trails, tell visitors about the animals, clean out cages. I had many odd adventures, but the most traumatic involved feeding our two large snakes, a rock python 20 foot in length and a reticulated python 27 foot in length. These snakes were so huge they spent their days collapsed in a pile of themselves in a glassed-in building we called the snakatorium. If one moved it was to lift a head and test the room temperature with its tongue. It was clear to me that these creatures were severely depressed, which I could understand. Jungle Larry's zoo was a cross between an old-timey zoo with steel bars and slabs, and a fake jungle, with bamboo and Spanish moss everywhere. The visitors saw the foliage, but the animals were stuck behind bars. They -- the animals -- were all insane -- from boredom, alienation, ill health, or the scent of something nearby that they should either be eating or being eaten by. It was -- unnatural. Larry made matters worse by playing the theme song from the movie Born Free 16 hours a day on the PA system. That dreadful song embedded itself in the nucleotides of all our bodies' cells. I could not help automatically finish the first line each time: "Born free, and now they're in cages ..." Anyway, these huge snakes were depressed, and wouldn’t eat. Two months would pass between meals, and as they represented a considerable investment -- perhaps $100,000 in 1967 dollars? -- it was imperative that they be fed. Against their will. So one night, after the zoo shut down, Larry and his assistant B'wana Walt, and myself and some other guy, undertook to feed two piglets to the two snakes. The pigs came in a crate, and they were sensible enough to be alarmed, squealing and honking at the silent presence in the room. The plan: cut the pigs' throats, pry open the snake's jaws, and coax the freshly killed bodies into the snakes' digestive channels. It was my duty to hold the piggies while Walt cut their throats with a bread knife. The little pigs cried piteously as I held them. I will never, ever forget that sound, or the feeling of the warm blood washing over my hands and arms, onto my shirt, where it quickly cooled. Walt did the dirty work, getting the snakes to unhinge their jaws, wiping the blood on their faces to arouse them, and shoehorning the pigs' heads into their gullets. What struck me was how out of kilter it was, these $50,000 snakes who had no zest for life, being force-fed these $3 creatures who wept desperately to live. But we did it, and the snakes thrived, after a fashion. A week after eating , they pooped out the pigs' flesh. Several days later they pooped out their mashed skeletons. Every now and then, one of them would move. So when my daughter acquired Crimson, I had no appetite for it. We discouraged her. We knew nothing about snake health, and it was quite a responsibility. And expense. Chances are Crimson would grow to be 16-18 feet long, and we would have to reenact the pig feeding ritual once every six weeks. Deep down, I dreaded re-feeling the feelings I felt in the snakatorium 34 years ago. One time Crimson got loose and was somewhere in the house for an entire week. Rachel and I would go to bed never 100% certain we would wake up in the morning. Daniele mocked us for this, but she was unable to produce the snake. (It was in her underwear drawer.) What we did not foresee was the snake getting sick. It grew a callus on its nose, a scab that covered its nostrils and infected its mouth and lips. It would not eat. Weeks went by like this, me denying it was in there, and Daniele sleeping in the same room as her, hearing it rasp through its strange mask, struggling to breathe. We took her to a special vet, who did helpful things like excising the scab and force-feeding her with a tube. At one point I had to hold her while we gave her shots. Lord, you should have felt her coiling away from that needle, attempting to strike us to prevent the mortal stab, and the stung, stiff feeling in her muscle when the needle went in. Then this past week, we coaxed Crimson to swallow her first food in almost six months - a thawed frozen rat. So when Crimson started feeling frisky enough to hide under the bed, it represented a glorious comeback. As much as we were capable of, we celebrated her return to health. She is a person to us now, who has struggled
and prevailed. How can you not love such a snake, just a little warm-blooded
bit? Copyright (c) 2001 by Michael Finley Like the essay? Click
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reader feedbackThis was disgusting for a Monday morning. I absolutely hate snakes and feel very sorry for the little pigs, could you try to save these stories for a Friday. That way at least I have had the pleasure of working the "snake pit" all week and have a little empathy for the snake involved.....L.D. Mike: We all like going to the zoo, but they have their dark sides. Great story. And I'm glad I read it in a coherent state of mind. Even so, the image of killing the piglets, and force feeding them to the snakes, will stick with me. Today, I am a vegan. R.K. Even though my title is "editor," I hate correcting other writers, especially ones I admire. But you might want to check the pronouns in your first paragraph today. I'm pretty sure the bedroom is Daniele's and not Crimson's, but ... On another note, I'll never forget the image of you and that poor piglet. Good writing! D.A.
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Now, ordinarily, the idea of a large constricting snake
going squirrelly in my teenage daughter's bedroom might be cause for
consternation. But not Tuesday. Because Crimson has been ill, and this sudden
interest in escaping (combined with heating her first rat in almost six months)
was cause for celebration.
