Our Hissy Neighbor
My kids snapped this picture while playing with their friends in our front-yard a few days back. They came running inside, screaming at the top of their lungs, yelling how they had spotted a long snake in our yard, with my son declaring how smooth and gooey its skin was. They had even managed to shoot a 90 secs video of the snake crawling back into its hole on the side of our house’s back wall. My first reaction, as soon as I finally understood what all the commotion was about, was of mortal fear. What? Where? Who saw it? Is it still alive? What do you mean you touched it? I wasn’t sure if my tongue was rolling faster than my brain or heart or my legs as I ran outside to the place where rest of their friends had gathered, quickly followed by my son and daughter. The kids showed me the tranquil hole in which our genteel neighbor had apparently slithered into. My 2 kids and 2 of their friends were animatedly discussing how smooth and shiny its skin was and how there could be multiple snakes inside that crevice. I was freaking out.
Thanks to Google Images, I quickly discerned that our new neighbor was a rubber boa, officially a rather “safe”, non-venomous snake. A fact that allowed me to not take any drastic action, like calling wildlife conservation society; I wasn’t going to start digging out the snake hole in case you’re wondering. The fact that this incident happened about 6 weeks after our landscaper, Eberardo, found 2 rather shiny black snakes near the water fountain in front of our home scared the daylights out of me; he had picked those two and released in the boonies at the back of our property. Eberardo quickly denounced both varieties of snakes (I showed him the above picture) rather innocuous but also thought that all 3 were exotic snakes that he had never seen in and around Oregon. He even asked me if those were our pets. “Are you kidding me?” I yelled out. “Let me tell you something about us Indians, Eberardo,” I started. “Most of us are very scared of snakes. Should you ever find anything that resembles a snake — big or small, black or white, in water or on land, anywhere in the vicinity of our home, please dispose it off one way or the other, and never tell me about it,” were my clear instructions. Eberardo just laughed and left, but not before acknowledging my request.
Snake bites kill 45,000 Indians every year. I grew up reading mythological and folk tales, where snakes were always poisonous. I had seen snakes in zoos and had heard or witnessed stories, in movies and in real life, where characters had died from snake bites. A King Cobra (it is the world’s longest venomous snake and one of the most prevalent types found in India) is the defacto picturization of a snake in my head; I believe that to be the case for a majority of folks who grew up around me, maybe most Indians. I vividly remember a night when we saw a neighborhood cat fight with a snake in the balcony of our home when I was about 10 years old. I was having dinner with my family when we saw the cat grab the snake and jump out of the window of our dimly lit balcony. We weren’t sure if it was indeed a snake or if the cat had successfully gotten hold of it before leaping out of the window. That was a night I recollect, when we refused to go to our respective bedrooms, choosing instead to sleep together in the living room! Bottom-line: Snakes evoke a morbid fear for a majority of Indians.
In America by contrast, it has been estimated that approximately 7,000–8,000 people receive venomous bites per year, and about 5 of those people die. Even accounting for the 5X population delta between India and the US, the fatality rate is much lower in the US. Based on my internet research and chatting with a few neighbors, most of the snakes found in the US are non-venomous. And with so much greenery, open yards, gardens and fields in the US, snakes are just part of home wildlife, much like wall lizards and mice are unnecessary, but not morbidly feared, pests in India. Most locals and now our kids as well, are not creeped out handling snakes, as witnessed in the following picture of our son Arjun holding a baby python when he was 8.
In the meantime, that rubber boa is nestled somewhere in the crevice by the back wall of our home. Eberardo tried to dig it out of its hole the other day but it was nowhere to be found. One of my neighbors opined that the previous owners of our home must have had a fancy for snakes and probably left them in the front to take care of mice and other such pests. Not that I like mice either, but I’d gladly take them over the snakes as my neighbors.
