We’re all guilty of folly to some degree. But this might be one of those “You can’t make this up” moments.
911 Call on July 28: “…he has my nose.”
An Ohio woman rescued two boa constrictors the day before she made the call, telling the dispatcher that, “I have a boa constrictor stuck to my face.” Fortunately, a firefighter had a pocket knife sharp enough to cut off the snake’s head, so the woman suffered no life-threatening injuries from her “pet.” At the time of this writing, no one knows whether or not she intends to keep her collection of about 10 snakes, which, according to a neighbor interviewed, she sometimes wore around her neck on a walk toward Lake Erie.
Ah! Modern civilization. We have cell phones. Good thing. Imagine, however, in an age when we hear people say, “I thought I had seen it all,” that we now can picture a woman holding a cell phone with a snake on her face. Too bad we can’t add that she was driving and texting the message to the dispatcher.
So, the woman likes snakes and likes to care for them. A bit unusual in just about any culture. Many snakes are venomous and have backward pointing fangs or have powerful muscles to squeeze the life from prey. “But they are still living things,” the snake owner might argue. “They don’t deserve to be treated cruelly; that’s why I rescued two yesterday.”
Has this person ever seen the size of a snake’s brain. That little bit of grey matter has pretty much three things to do, find and eat prey, avoid predators of its own, and procreate. Certainly, it doesn’t fetch sticks like Fido. And it’s not as though one can take a snake for a walk in any way other to transport it in a cart or around one’s neck. Who wants to walk a pet that is indistinguishable from its leash?
Seven billion of us keep one another entertained with our folly. The daily news keeps us informed lest we forget how some of us believe we can make an alternate reality that is truly “real.” It took a very long time for wolves to yield dogs. You can keep snakes around your campfire as long as you and your many descendants want, but they won’t become future Fidos. Certainly, you can’t do what time and a larger brain has done for social animals like wolves and dogs—those four-legged creatures were predisposed to socialization. There’s no overnight transforming to domesticity by some well-intentioned woman with an affinity for snakes. We can’t in our hubris change certain realities by mere wish or will. Graveyards and the empty coffins of those who have been eaten are indicators that risk-taking has consequences. Follow the folly if you want to see examples of the dead who thought they could jump into the dens of lions or tigers in zoos, gotten too near to moose or bears in the woods, or gone to photograph big animals of Africa only to learn too late through close encounter that “this was not a good idea. Doesn’t this animal know I mean it no harm?”
Maybe human folly with regard to animals derives from a misunderstanding of evolutionary principles. Individuals do not evolve. Species do. That’s difficult for people steeped in science fiction and misinterpretation to understand. It seems to have been a misunderstanding of reality behind the Ohio woman’s making a call with the snake on her face.
911 Call on July 28: “…he has my nose.”
An Ohio woman rescued two boa constrictors the day before she made the call, telling the dispatcher that, “I have a boa constrictor stuck to my face.” Fortunately, a firefighter had a pocket knife sharp enough to cut off the snake’s head, so the woman suffered no life-threatening injuries from her “pet.” At the time of this writing, no one knows whether or not she intends to keep her collection of about 10 snakes, which, according to a neighbor interviewed, she sometimes wore around her neck on a walk toward Lake Erie.
Ah! Modern civilization. We have cell phones. Good thing. Imagine, however, in an age when we hear people say, “I thought I had seen it all,” that we now can picture a woman holding a cell phone with a snake on her face. Too bad we can’t add that she was driving and texting the message to the dispatcher.
So, the woman likes snakes and likes to care for them. A bit unusual in just about any culture. Many snakes are venomous and have backward pointing fangs or have powerful muscles to squeeze the life from prey. “But they are still living things,” the snake owner might argue. “They don’t deserve to be treated cruelly; that’s why I rescued two yesterday.”
Has this person ever seen the size of a snake’s brain. That little bit of grey matter has pretty much three things to do, find and eat prey, avoid predators of its own, and procreate. Certainly, it doesn’t fetch sticks like Fido. And it’s not as though one can take a snake for a walk in any way other to transport it in a cart or around one’s neck. Who wants to walk a pet that is indistinguishable from its leash?
Seven billion of us keep one another entertained with our folly. The daily news keeps us informed lest we forget how some of us believe we can make an alternate reality that is truly “real.” It took a very long time for wolves to yield dogs. You can keep snakes around your campfire as long as you and your many descendants want, but they won’t become future Fidos. Certainly, you can’t do what time and a larger brain has done for social animals like wolves and dogs—those four-legged creatures were predisposed to socialization. There’s no overnight transforming to domesticity by some well-intentioned woman with an affinity for snakes. We can’t in our hubris change certain realities by mere wish or will. Graveyards and the empty coffins of those who have been eaten are indicators that risk-taking has consequences. Follow the folly if you want to see examples of the dead who thought they could jump into the dens of lions or tigers in zoos, gotten too near to moose or bears in the woods, or gone to photograph big animals of Africa only to learn too late through close encounter that “this was not a good idea. Doesn’t this animal know I mean it no harm?”
Maybe human folly with regard to animals derives from a misunderstanding of evolutionary principles. Individuals do not evolve. Species do. That’s difficult for people steeped in science fiction and misinterpretation to understand. It seems to have been a misunderstanding of reality behind the Ohio woman’s making a call with the snake on her face.
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