Diamonds are Definitely Not a Girl’s Best Friend

I recently had an encounter with a venomous serpent that chose to challenge me for supremacy over the swimming pool. Given the nearly toxic levels of chlorine necessary to prevent the proliferation of scum during the sultry Florida summer, the snake probably found the environment less than hospitable and was exiting the chemical warfare facility when observed by my wife, who promptly informed me that there was a “huge” snake in the pool. The intruder proved to be a 24-inch long Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake who had somehow evaded the complex security to enter the critter exclusion zone in pursuit of whatever self-actualization is available to reptiles. My years of allegedly “useless” television viewing paid off in spades when I was quickly able to identify the triangular head as belonging to a deadly pit viper, not a creature to be incautiously addressed, even at only 24-inches.

With the aid of the pool skimmer and its eight foot aluminum handle, I was able to subdue the beast without incident or apparent harm to the creature itself, although it did strike at the plastic frame of the net numerous times during the encounter. The young lad vigorously shook its tail throughout, although, due to its immaturity, it didn’t do much better than mustering a barely audible buzz. Once perched upon the skimmer net the bemused snake was transported to the back yard where it was unceremoniously dumped over the fence with an admonition not to return, especially not to return when it was fully grown. The snake played it cool, slithering away into the brush without any hint of appreciation of the indignity of having been bested by the superior Homo sapiens.

A mature Eastern Diamondback can be as long as seven feet in length and packs some serious venom, which has both hemotoxin and neurotoxin components. It is estimated that untreated adult bites have a human fatality rate of approximately thirty-percent, so it probably makes sense not to antagonize a grownup Crotalus adamanteus. While the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake is apparently very common throughout its range, I have spent most of my life in Georgia and Florida, quite a bit of it in the woods, and had never seen one in the wild prior to this adventure, if a swimming pool counts as “the wild”. I can only assume that they don’t much like human company, although they are particularly fond of rats and rabbits, but not as Facebook friends.

My wild encounter with this lethal reptilian assassin got me to thinking about snakes and stuff. Everything in nature, it seems, has a place, an identifiable function, except us. In a balanced system, the snakes keep the rabbit population under control, thus the rabbits don’t denude their environment of vegetation, avoiding both rabbit famine and snake starvation. In turn, the snakes don’t eat too many rabbits because they only need to feed once every few weeks. This particular predator/prey relationship is just one of probably hundreds of thousands which make up the very complex web of interactions that sustain our planet’s ecosystem and, by extension, our lives. However, with the possible exception of Ted Nugent, the human race exists largely beyond, and often in contradiction to, this system, primarily by choice.

With managed herds of genetically controlled livestock, much of our need for protein is met outside of the normal predator/prey relationship, which has allowed our populations to swell dangerously. In cases where we still exploit the natural system, we often foolishly over-use resources, resulting in the long-term loss of sustainability. Of course, everybody knows these things, yet we still resist acknowledging our own responsibility on a personal level. We are in the awkward position of being both in the audience and in the movie at the same time; we are so disconnected from nature by both process and philosophy that most of us really don’t know where we fit in the scheme of things. We are just somewhere between the animals and the angels, an assessment which provides little guidance in global ecological responsibility.

Ironically, one thing that is probably true about us is that, of all nature’s creatures, we are the only ones capable of appreciating nature, and ourselves, in the abstract. It is very unlikely that the Cape Buffalo marvels at the stealth and speed of the Nile Crocodile or appreciates the evolutionary refinement which provides such tremendous power with such a conservative metabolism. The Cape Buffalo probably just thinks “oh shit”, if it really thinks at all. We, on the other hand, can marvel at the intricate electrical sensing apparatus of the Tiger Shark and the perfected design of its aquadynamics, even as it circles in curiosity. Of course, if it turns towards us with an opened mouth, we will probably be thinking much the same as the buffalo.

Perhaps then this is what the role of humanity is in the big picture; we are entrusted with the knowledge of the beauty and wonder and mystery of nature. We are assigned the task of seeking to understand that which all other creatures are simply programmed to accept. Entrusted by whom, you may ask? Who knows; divine writ, random chance, Greenpeace? I just know that in my epic battle with the deadly serpent, I felt more like the babysitter than like St. George, and I didn’t see the snake as the embodiment of evil, but as a test of whether I would submit to the evil of fear and unreasoning prejudice and destroy something beautiful and wonderful and hissing just because of the hissing thing. For my next act, I will reduce my weekly visits to McDonald’s by fifty-percent. Cockroaches are, on the other hand, the disciples of Voland and shall be shown no mercy.