“The
only good snake is a dead snake,” my aunt used to say, followed by a
predictable shudder. She admitted they
had their purpose, that they were good for the world – what I would later be
taught in environmental studies was their niche in the ecology of a particular
place. “I just don’t want to see them,” she’d explain.
My aunt was the closest thing to a
naturalist I would encounter until my late 20’s when I returned to college. She taught me the names of flowers and mosses
in her woods, fish and insects in her creek, birds in her orchard. From her I learned respect and love for the
wild things, even when they came up on the porch. I never saw her kill a snake: she just jumped
away.
This past weekend I saw two dead
snakes along the road. Both appeared to
have been run over, although I didn’t stop to examine their carcasses. Both glistened, as snakes do when they’ve
just shed their skins, reminding me of a time I nearly stepped on one sleeping in
the grass. “Good thing you didn’t,” said
a naturalist friend who knows. “They’re can’t
see as well when they’ve just shed, and their
vulnerability makes them quicker to bite.”
The snake was golden, beautiful even though frightening. I’m still grateful I saw it.
My fear of snakes, which is natural,
was heightened by growing up on 1950’s western movies, where snakes and Indians
were the villains who made the cowboys look heroic. I had rattlesnake nightmares throughout my
youth and still remember one vividly when I was 6. It was about a Christmas tree “decorated”
with them, which I did not discover until I reached for a present below its
boughs. I woke up screaming, standing in the middle of my bed. In my late 20’s I worked hard to
unlearn that accentuated fear, but it wasn’t until I moved here, where rattlers
are part of daily life in the foothills, that I adjusted.
So when I saw those two dead snakes
last week, I hurt. Most likely they were
just gopher snakes, since I was west of the Friant-Kern Canal. Regardless of species, snakes are natural
predators of ground squirrels, which plague our groves and growers. Each snake death eliminates a harvester we
need for balance, which is a form of beauty as well as necessary for our
long-term survival.
Were their deaths accidental, or the
result of some driver’s intention? I
asked myself that question without realizing its importance until a friend
spoke the same question when I told him about my sightings. He then told me about stopping to herd a snake
off the road himself, reminding me of other friends with the same
proclivity. I’ve stopped to herd stray
cattle off the road, but when I watched a friend move a tarantula from the path
of cars, I was humbled.
Snakes are better alive than dead,
friends. They don’t threaten our
existence until we threaten theirs, so when we can avoid killing them, let’s
do.
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Trudy
Wischemann is a fearful eco-freak who lives west of the canal for a
reason. You can send her your snake
stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or visit www.trudysnotesfromhome.blogspot.com and leave a
comment there.
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