How much is that snake in the window?

The Snake In The Window
Why settle for a dog or cat when you can have an ancient divine serpent
for the next 20 years?
Mark Morford - San Francisco Chronicle
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/11/14/notes111403.DTL&nl=fix

The trick, she found, is not to scream when they hand you a five-foot-long, blood-red ball python.

And, indeed, there were plenty of snakes. Lots and lots of snakes. Boas and pythons and snub-nosed milk snakes, bull snakes and hognose snakes and red-tailed snakes and one astoundingly gorgeous baby silver Trans-Pecos rat snake that had this ghostlike bluish-lavender hue and huge bulging blue eyes and looked like it could coil around your id and inspire your dreams and never let go.

There were Brazilian rainbow snakes and king snakes and corn snakes by the dozen, scarlets and pastels and pearlescents, striped and snow and creamsicle and candy canes and one giant albino python and probably dozens more of every color and length and thickness and slithery leathery power and serpenty goodness.

And now, after casually introducing, during one sunny recent afternoon, my brilliant and mystically wired and goddess-inspired S.O. to the chthonic and forked-tongue world of snakedom via the wonders and friendly reptilian bliss that is the East Bay Vivarium, she is seriously considering the purchase of a pet snake.

http://www.eastbayvivarium.com

This is how it happens. These are the things that just sort of amble into your life and shake you up and make you think, maybe change the way you appreciate the world, how you dissolve your fears and increase your awareness of petdom and snakedom and your personal range of possibility, and realize there is far, far more available to you, if you just sort of open up and go with it and get yourself a serpent that will live through the next four presidential elections.

Snakes. Who woulda thunk.

Some in the Vivarium squirmed slowly, coiled like garden hoses left out in the sun. Some stretched long and languid, twisted like reptilian licorice. Some lumped themselves in clumps like piles of thick rope dropped randomly from the sky. And each and every one had that weird slithery divine laconic ancient power, and fear, and magic, and plain ol' shrugging serpentine laziness.

It's easy to fall in love. Snakes -- especially the many irresistible baby snakes we handled -- have this sly cute sexy dark funky alternative cool rock-and-roll appeal. They have, furthermore, enormous divine feminine power and have for millennia induced adorably whiny Christian terror and pagan celebration and even now inspire often pathological dread amongst the easily dread filled. These are, of course, all good things.

And, of course, snakes are nothing if not incredibly potent and ancient and eternal fertility symbols and goddess symbols and kundalini (divine feminine energy) symbols, birth and death and sex and good and evil and knowledge itself.

They are Eve's tempter and Medusa's hair, Shiva's necklace and the half-human, half-serpent Nagas, they are Buto the Minoan snake goddess and Cretan snake prophetesses, and they are coiled on the forehead of pharaohs and slither through hermetic doctrines and in mystery cults in ancient Rome and Greece, all related to the knowledge of Serpent power, representing everything from regeneration to rebirth to the cycles of time and life and the universe itself. Plus, they also make a wicked-cool pair of boots. Shhh.

With the possible acquisition of a serpent, the S.O. might just become one of, you know, "those people." One of those odd quirky sorts who just happens to have a large snake as a pet, who you meet somewhere and they say hey I wonder if I fed Kundi this week and you say who's Kundi and they say it's my pet boa constrictor and you go, oh. Um. Oh.

And while she still craves someday getting a big fluffy Burmese mountain dog and while I am still on the long, slow hunt for a perfect large sleek dog myself, some sort of Ridgeback Lab husky Doberman hodgepodge, it is the new possibilities, the rearranged notions of self and petdom and what type of person you think you are that keeps you on your karmic and psychological toes. You know?

To be sure, snakes are not easy pets. They may not be the brightest or most active creatures hugging the earth, but they do require devoted attention and specific heat lamps and proper feeding and a serious commitment of time and care and money.

And you gotta watch for eye mites and eating disorders and skin problems and they are indeed rather mysterious weird primordial creatures, carrying in their ancient eyes that added layer of myth and magic and nightmare and cultural programming of fear, and, unlike your "normal" house pet, they don't exactly wag a tail or claw your face off to let you in on the secret of their temperament.

Obviously, you don't go into snake ownership lightly. You don't get one just because they're pretty or because they'd terrify your mom or because you can buy one with markings that match the couch.

Plus there's the whole feeding-them-dead-frozen-baby-mice thing. Nothing like keeping little Zip-Lock baggies full of tiny pink frozen hairless rodents in your freezer to feed your pet rat snake to give life more lucid perspective.

I have no idea if she will get a snake. I have no idea if a gorgeous 5-foot ropelike python with a hankering for mythology and a taste for mice will enter our lives for the next two decades. This was her first time ever handling serpents and she was indeed powerfully struck and enamored and they synch up beautifully with her training in world religions and goddess scholarship and divine funk, but I have no idea how far the appreciation will take her, or us, into the land of herp.

But handling snakes and delving into the reptilian underworld, even if just for an afternoon, and realizing that you really do not have to scream when the huge red ball python wraps itself around your arm like a giant living bracelet and that it can, in fact, be astounding and powerful and perspective altering, well, these things are what make life vibrant, and fascinating, and wondrously serpentine in its casual weirdness.

But, oh, that tiny silver Trans-Pecos rat snake with the big blue eyes, it was calling, calling.