World Snake Day

Anyway I don't have any plans except probably the beer thing, and "think of snakes" as a general background task. I might also maneuver silently between branches, bask on a hot rock in the sun, steal an egg, lay an egg, molt, tie myself into a knot below the earth in dreamless sleep, or emerge writhing and lethargic from a steaming hole in spring. I might, I might not. But I am going to at least think about these things. And at some point I'll intensely visualize a snake uncurling from the base of my pelvis and traveling up my spine to explode in light at the crown of my head. I recommend you do the same.

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Snake Facts

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One thing I love about snakes is that their shape spells out the only sound they make: S. And it's the first letter of their name, that works out perfect.

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Another thing is that they said no to arms? That's really incredible. I mean I love my arms, and my legs for that matter, but I really respect that there are many ways to play the game, and that there's a pretty successful strategy that says no thanks to arms.

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Snakes can be found throughout the world and the only place where there are no snakes is the Arctic region. They are such adaptable creatures that they live in deserts, cities, oceans, lakes, forests, rainforests, and almost everywhere else. If you think that right now there aren't snakes in your part of the world, or even in your neighborhood, well I take no pride in saying this but you're mistaken.

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They can swim and crawl quite fast, and though they can't fly, there are gliding snakes that can outmaneuver and intercept a flying squirrel in mid air.

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Sometimes people have pet snakes that get loose in the apartment building, then get in the walls and live there, happily eating mice, lounging on warm ducts, and getting mega big, and God bless. You only ever hear about this when the snake noses out and someone in the complex says "Oh yeah, there was a lady here with a pet snake but that was yearrrrrs ago". Probably there's a lot of apartments with this feature and no one knows about it except the snake.

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My favorite snake is probably garter snake, which is cute and harmless, and they're named after part of a "sexy ragtime" costume, which lends them an added jouissance.

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Generally snakes keep to themselves, and are not seen. Sometimes they get really huge, like the tree-sized snake spotted in Bridgewater State Park in 1939. The ones that get personeatingly big do so by not being anywhere near people ever, so you can take some respite in that.

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Snakes get a bad rap in the west, for no reason. True, a snake gave Eve the apple, but you know what, apples are delicious.

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Mythologically, and across all cultures, snakes are really important. There are really too many wonderful and central snake myths and motifs to even start to list them in this pitiful margin. Possibly this is because, as Gary Larson once said, they are particularly easy to represent in 2 or 3 dimensional art (this is a paraphrase). Also I think that snakes are probably one of the easier animals to hallucinate. Very few people will eat the wrong berries and start seeing orangutans, or wildebeests, but who amongst us hasn't seen a snake where there probably was no snake? I certainly have and I'm not even a shaman.

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World Snake Day 2186 will have the longest solar eclipse in 5 MILLENNIA, a record that won't be broken for another 5 MILLENNIA! Mark the date-- July 16, 2186.

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If you want to think of "World Snake Day" like "[World] [Snake Day]" (day celebrating snakes around the world) or "[World Snake] [Day]" (day celebrating "the World Snake"), I think either is valid. I'll leave "World Snake" to your imagination.

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links / misc

• I know I linked to this before, but if you're looking for a nice list of movies with snakes, I recommend the "snakes in movies" section from CaliforniaHerps.com: [link]. My favorite is the "snake face" section, with pictures of every time in a movie someone sees a snake. The non-movie part of this website is practical information about reptiles and amphibians of California-- how to identify them, what to do if you see them, how to get them to live in your yard. The movie stuff seems like just a fun little thing they add to everytime someone in the clique sees a good snake movie. It seems that they started in 2002 and they've been slowly adding more to the website ever since, which is the real benefit of a website- it's like a book that you never stop writing.
• I watched a lot of "snake doing something" videos for this post, but I'm only going to post one, it's "snake licking a lollypop":

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World Snake Day: July 16

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