Monday, August 29, 2011

We Love Einie!

My son got his pet Corn Snake about 5 years ago when it was only about 14" long. A captive-bred beauty, Ryan named him/her Einstein. He's now over 4 feet long. Very tame, we took to calling him Einie, and we love to watch the efficiency with which he catches mice and swallows them. We let him crawl around on the front lawn from time to time and he never tries to speed away. He never tries to bite when picked up. A possible exception to that would be if he was very hungry and mistook a finger for a mouse. I'm featuring Einie today because a part of his native territory (that is, of his species) includes Arkansas where a disturbing event occurred recently with respect to snakes. This event displayed the widespread ignorance about snakes in our society. As reported in Yahoo News, it seems a high school football player in Gravette, Arkansas, reached into his football helmet and felt something "slimy." He shook out the slimy thing and it turned out to be a small snake. By the way, snakes are not slimy! The big, brave football coach killed the snake then pronounced it non-venomous. He is then quoted as saying "All snakes are deadly in my book." Out of curiosity, I went to the school's website. It seems that the school is a state power in football and aspires to national recognition. I'd suggest the opposing teams adopt snake logos. This team would probably fall apart.

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