It takes surprisingly little to become an expert on snakes. Library card captures of Ditmars, Oliver, Pope, Schmidt & Inger and Conant, plus plenty of field trips, and a kid can know more about snakes than 99.999% of the grownups. The only reason this knowledge carries special tribal prestige is that people are afraid of snakes. And the person, regardless of age, who moves forward while others scream and flee is possessor of an ancient power.
It is a power because, despite the commonly encountered ‘snakes are your friends because they eat grain gobbling rodents’, the more important truth is that snakes kill more people every year than all other non-human vertebrates combined. Furthermore, while only around one in twenty venomous snake bites kills a person, the other 19 are frequently left in wreathing pain for days and then the bitten appendage may rot off. And this sequela does not go unnoticed by the principle’s family and neighbors. Snakes are, as a snake once put it, “more powerful than the finger of a king”. Fire power, plus they are basically small and therefore way too close when first spotted, accounts for their fearsome status. Hence, the leap from a kid who plays with snakes to full blown witch doctor status is power over the poisonous.
Mike helped me build a cinderblock snake pit in the basement despite my mother’s position of “we’ll see” during the constructions phase. In the event she let me buy a cottonmouth from Ray Singleton and we put him in the pit. Not long after the snake’s arrival Dave came by with his father’s excellent camera and close-up lens. To take real advantage of the close-up lens full powers somebody had to do something they had never done before. Therefore I have a close-up picture of the first venomous snake I ever touched. Dave claimed that there was a ring of my sweat around the snake’s neck when I tossed him down. This photo shoot did not really count as the moment of full powers over the serpent. What was required was to go mano-o-snakeo, on his home turf, i.e. catch one.
So as a young nature counselor I was full of long pent-up desire to catch a poisonous snake and when the time came it came in spades. It all started one night when another counselor got clipped on the calf by what had to have been a poisonous snake. Nobody saw the snake but he spent some time in the hospital. Only a few nights later we were sitting in the head office monitoring the ebb and flow of a capture-the-flag battle down in junior camp. In runs a kid “Mr. L, there’s a snake”. Nothing new here until I get to the excitement where Flynn (maybe nine) has one tennis shoed foot gently on top of the front half of a 2 foot copperhead. And he was surrounded by about 50 kids with 50 flash lights (Nice stage lighting; the sawed-off appreciate an audience). Snake stick retrieved from the Nature Hut I put one hand under Flynn’s arm pit, to give him a little extra lift, and told him to jump.
Now my plan was to pin the copperhead’s head, as these things were supposed to be done, pick him up behind his head, and take him to the Nature Hut. As it turned out the snake had other plans and took off like a bat-out-of-hell when Flynn jumped off him. Fortunately the stage lighting crew scattered. Some chase eventually resulted in the planned out come. The Head Counselor said “well done”. Nobody bitten, snake on display, and I just made the leap.
As events unfolded it was less of a leap and more of an ongoing sprint around Camp putting the cuffs, so to speak, on pit vipers. A few nights after the first copperhead, just after lights out, a camper + counselor came to say there was a snake in the bathroom –copperhead two. Within days at an evening Jr/Sr. camp cook out in Sr camp….”Mr L there’s a snake under the cloths line”. That would be number three. Within days, a group hike from Camp turned up a big number four.
The Head Counselor, a very level headed leader, was starting to get worried. Not only had a counselor been bitten and both Jr and Sr. camp suddenly infested with copperheads, the capture on the hike made it look like we were also surrounded. A call to Tennessee Fish and Game indicated that the entire state was not being overrun with copperheads. I did my best to share in Camp’s official concern but in truth I was having a really good summer.
ML
5/28/07
