Monty Python - And the Wholly Grossed

My eighteen year old grandson living in New Mexico tells me with delight he has named his Ball Python "Monty."

There are things that you skirt in your life-- you avoid, you dodge, in any way you can you devise to get certain things out of your face! One of these things, for me, has been snakes.

What is it that brings these things back into your face repeatedly? (Notice that a surprising number of snakes have made their way into my blog in a very few weeks' time!)

I liked snakes when I first met them. They were cute little babies under our porch in Swarthmore. I suspect I did not meet (or get to see-- lurking in the shadows) their mama, but in any case my first known encounter was with some small narrow creatures who were bereft of feet but managed to move around with mostly eyes and tongues and a strange gait. I was not much more than three years old, because I know that when I was three and a half, we moved from Swarthmore.

My mother later told me that I brought these wonderful creatures in and wagged them over the stove where she was cooking and said "Aren't they cute?" She did not. She also did not think them cute when they ended up in my dolly's bed.

My first real memory of fear of snakes was a summer in the 40's when I was happily striding toward the swimming pool in my bare feet through a neighbor's field. In the dead middle of the field I stepped on something writhing and when my foot came reflexively UP, the snake moved out quickly, encircled my other ankle and then whipped away through the grass. I was absolutely frozen with fright! I spent quite some time deciding which way to go-- to the pool or back home!! It was about fifty/fifty-- the snake could be ANYWHERE. I can still feel the surprising strength of that narrow creature and see how quickly it was here and then gone without a trace. It may be that the ability to alarm and surprise is the snake's scariest feature. It certainly worked on me!

From that time I have been frightened of snakes. Whether one ascribes "sliminess" (not a factor), slithery characteristics (a factor), or a biblical satanic connection to snakes, one can persuade oneself that they are definitely evil in some very visceral way.

And I was tested on this! When I was a young lifeguard a mischievous teen-aged dude handed me a young garter snake from the nearby creek. Realizing that if I did not handle this situation wisely I was going to be tormented with snakes the whole rest of the swimming season, I called upon all the adrenaline in my system and used it to pick that thing up and let it wrap itself around my wrist. I heard myself admiring it and saying how amazing its color was and how interesting that it smelled with its tongue. I handed the snake back to the "perp" and asked that he return it to the creek where it would be happy. He, instead, poked a stick out for me to drape it on (the wimp!), and then did what I suggested with obvious squeamishness of his own.

I paid in tons of excess adrenaline that literally shook me for about an hour afterward, but I WON! I won respect for the swimming pool season.

This does not prepare me much, however, for Monty Python.

How am I to enthuse about this beast? I read up on these things on Google, and got images on them. They are, like all snakes, long and sinuous. This was, I was told, a "constricting snake", which led me to believe it was even stronger than I remembered. ICK is what I have to say to that!

The Google sites describe Ball Pythons as "gentle", "usually calm", "good pets for new snake owners." Never mind! I do NOT want to visit my grandson in his house! I don't even want to stop in! And I certainly hope he does not get to be a seasoned snake collector.

I did visit him when he had an iguana. I didn't like the iguana and it didn't like me. It ate live worms, I seem to remember. It hissed, actually. And I actually held and caressed a small gem-like tree frog he had that had suction cups for toes. It was cute, but not really loveable. It did not love me either, I sensed.

But I will pass on Monty Python. I don't want to hear how or what it eats. I don’t' want to "get to know" him.

But I adore my grandson!

May he become an expert on what he is designed to do best, I really mean it! And may he be wonderfully rewarded for his contributions to the field, whatever it is.

But I will steer myself widely AROUND that field if it tends to be occupied by snakes!



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