This is a long blog about Snakes: why I am deathly afraid of them, how I never want to be near one: EVER!, and why we need to protect them
By Holladay Allen
Native Foods Tribe Member
It was 1987 and I was seven years old. My parents had just purchased their first house. Upon the arrival of my little brother Anders, my parents, my grandfather Gus and I packed up the old wooden blue house across the street from the park and headed uptown to a more spacious abode with a sparkling swimming pool and the ocean as our backyard (well, it was technically a canal, but it connected to the ocean, and we were excited!). I immediately took to the neighboring backyards and canals exploring. I tried not to be too invasive, climbing through the mangrove bushes that lined the ranch style homes along the narrow canal. Our next-door neighbors, the Balances (yeah that was their last name, and they were from Cuba, strange.) had the best backyard for exploring. They did not venture much past their back patio, so the backyard was unkempt and filled with unmanicured trees and bushes, which made for excellent climbing and hiding. (This was quite the contrary to my backyard, as my mother who was born with two hands of green thumbs, had fandangled our backyard into a perfectly designed forest of linear trees and precisely trimmed bushes which left little room for hiding and disappearing.) My favorite tree was smack dab in the middle of the Balances’ backyard. The trunk had a wide thick base with various grooves and humps that made it easy to ascend. The trunk divided into five branches about six feet up. At the center, where it branched out, there was a nice deep concave seat, just for me, in the center of this tree. I loved nestling myself in this small wooden bowl with my legs dangling toward the ground below. I spent hours here, napping, reading, and daydreaming (I’ve got daydreams galore).
One late afternoon, I hurled myself over the concrete wall that separated our houses, skipping the much more subtle route through the mangroves in order to take my seat before the afternoon thunderstorms commenced. I climbed quickly up the trunk and positioned my arms between two of the branches to hoist myself upward into my throne: but something stopped me in my tracks. How peculiar! Someone had left a perfectly coiled rope in the center of the tree. The clouds were starting to darken the afternoon sky so I reached for the black rope in order to toss it to the ground. The only problem was that it was NOT a rope. A small black head shot straight up through the center of the coil and launched itself directly at my face. Beyond startled, my heart in my stomach, I shimmied down that tree and ran straight back into the welcoming arms of my mother’s suburban forest. And so began a lifelong fear, disgust, and downright distrust of snakes and all snake-like animals, such as eels (eewwww).
I shared this fear with my mother. Neither of us could even stand to look at a snake directly without cringing, whether it be in books, movies, and especially in person. Living in the tropics, our windows and doors were open and screenless most of the time, morning, noon, and night. I would rather not think about the parade of insects, lizards, scorpions, snakes, and other wildlife that filed through our home at any given moment, finding comfort and solace in the folds of my pillowcase. One vivid example of this never-ending parade that just won’t quit from my memory: my mother, grandmother and I walked into the kitchen after returning home, to find a five foot black rat snake coiled up on the kitchen counter. My mother and I flipped out (borderline hysterical) while my grandmother was left to try and “shoo” the reptile out of the kitchen toward the nearest window. Well, I could list in detail the numerous encounters I have had with snakes and the fear each encounter instilled in me, for whatever reason, but I have made tremendous progress and do not wish to hash up old feelings. I can now look directly at a snake in a book or on television with only a SLIGHT gag reflex and minimal hair-raising.
So I know you are thinking…. What brought about this rant on snakes and your childhood and blah blah blah? Well, I was eating my Rockin’ Moroccan at Native Foods this evening while flipping through the latest PETA publication, when I came across the section about various animal skins used for fashion. I honestly had no idea the indescribable torture that snakes endure at the hands of some of fashion’s merciless elite.
Live skinning is a popular method of obtaining the skin from exotic animals, especially reptiles. Proponents of this despicable industry claim that it is the only way to preserve the skin in its most supple form. GROSS!
Biologist and Britain’s leading reptile expert Clifford Warwick describes the process:
'The snakes are often nailed to a tree with a large nail. It doesn't kill them because they have a small brain and there's little chance of actually hitting it.
'The hunters then slice round the base of the head and peel the skin clean off the live animal and then throw the still-living carcass onto a pile and leave it to die. It can take hours or days for them to die from dehydration or shock - it is a really dreadful thing for them to do.'
He continues: 'In other places they will decapitate the animal before skinning. The problem is that decapitating the snake doesn't kill it instantly.
'With a snake the head will be alive for an hour or two hours - completely conscious, completely sensitive to pain, fear and everything else."
Can you imagine a world without snakes? I would like to, in theory that is. In actuality, I would like to keep them around, all of them, just at a great distance.
Dr. Mark Auliya, a scientific officer who monitors the international wildlife trade, can foresee the eventual extinction of these fashion victims:
“There is clear evidence that large specimens are getting rarer and rarer. It shows that the reticulated python cannot cope in the long term with the high out-take by the commercial skin trade.'
In reality, our fragile ecosystem would be on the verge of collapse without the snake to maintain the world’s rodent population (which carry a gazillion diseases around all parts of the planet everyday):
“Snakes are THE best natural rodent control on the planet in most parts of the world. I think that alone would be the biggest effect for humans – uncontrolled rodent populations. If you lose the females, there goes all the reproductive output. So, yes, they would face extinction.”
http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1724&category=Environment
Another problem that is posing a huge threat to Florida’s ecosystem (my homeland) is the presence of thousands of Burmese pythons which eat just about anything, including alligators, and have no natural predator in the Everglades. This is the result of uneducated pet owners releasing these foreign reptiles into the wild when they have grown too large to be handled (most of them grow in excess of 20 feet!).
According to National Geographic:
“Second only to habitat loss, invasive species are a leading cause of species endangerment and extinction both in the United States and worldwide. Almost half of the species on the U.S. endangered species list are threatened wholly or partly by introduced species. Steven A. Williams, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, calls invasive species the number one environmental threat to the United States”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0603_040603_invasivespecies.html
So… too many snakes, WE DIE! No snakes, WE DIE! The Earth is such a beautifully and intricately designed ecosystem, which really comes down to checks and balances (and I am not talking about my neighbors from Cuba!). We cannot use and abuse our fellow earthlings without suffering great repercussions in the future, the very near future. Respect for all living things, no matter how much they give you the heebie-jeebies.
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