I was picked on a lot in elementary school. I mean, I get it. I was weird and poor and wore hand-me-down gym suits. I had no hygiene, and being raised in a nerd environment, going to Mn-Stf (MN Science Fiction and Fantasy) meetings every other week and working a RenFair… I was very defensive. I mean, it doesn’t make it okay that Lisa pulled a chunk of my hair out of my head, or that Stacey pretended to be my friend and then turned around and told my secrets to all the other girls, or that the other kids invited me to a party just so they could un-invite me.
Most of those kids have apologized to me. Because when we grow up, we stop being horrid little elementary school kids.
I remember one confrontation, where we were sharing our favorite animals. Mine was the snake. They feel awesome, have pretty patterns, and they slither. Slithering is the best-looking mode of transportation. It is absolutely impossible to look uncool when slithering. And I very desperately wanted to be cool.
What’s cooler than a snake in sunglasses? NOTHING
Anyway, I said snake, and one of the girls piped up with “The snake tricked Eve in the garden. Only Evil people like snakes. You’re EVIL!”
I said something about how God made all creatures, even snakes, but of course no one listened. It was just another way in which I was a bad person that deserved to be picked on. It’s all in the justification. Just ask Mitt Romney about his 47%.
Years later, when I read Harry Potter and the title character could talk to snakes, I felt vindicated. SEE? Harry Potter’s not evil. Talking to snakes is fine! Great heroes talk to snakes!
You can only imagine the betrayal I felt when we found out it was because part of Voldemort’s soul was in Harry. Fuck you, J.K Rowling! You broke my heart!
Anyway, when I asked my mom for a snake, she said no. I begged and pleaded, and finally, she brought me to a truth I hadn’t yet faced about owning snakes. I would have to feed them mice.
I’m okay with snakes eating mice. Mice are horrid skittering creatures that deserve to die. Mice are stupid scary fast, and could crawl up your pants in half a second and bite you or something.
Look, I don’t know why mice are so scary to me while snakes aren’t. All I know is that HOLY FUCKING SHIT THERE IT WENT! You never know where it is, but you know it’s there, lurking around the corner, just waiting to skitter up to you and scare the hell out of you.
We had a mouse once, and I flipped my shit. I spent several hours on a chair while Bill set out poison and traps and those electronic noise things that are supposed to keep mice out.
It was probably a mouse from down the street where the church was being worked on. Church mouse. Not evil. Just looking for a place to crash.
Pious my ass!
BEFORE IT SKITTERS UP YOUR LEG AND- …well, it’s just too horrifying to say, really.
All of this came up for me because of the invasive brown tree snake population in Guam. They don’t belong there but they snuck in “aboard boats or in the wheel wells of airplanes.”
Mother fucking snakes on a mother fucking plane.
They’ve been eating up all the other animals, so scientists are trying to control the snake population by dropping mice bombs on them.
From the NPR article:
In April or May they’re going to lace dead mice with painkillers, attach them to little parachutes, drop them from helicopters and hope that they get snagged in the jungle foliage. Then, if all goes well, the snakes — which as their name implies hang out in trees — will eat the mice and die from ingesting the painkillers’ active ingredients.
Mice. Falling from the sky. And killing snakes. THIS is what’s wrong with the world.