A Snake, a Debate, and a Path Forward

Fall means pumpkins pumpkin flavored everything and brightly colored mums and chili and football -  all paired with the roar of leaf blower. The time has come where every few days I charge up my STIHL and create mini cyclones of maple, oak, and sourwood leaves swirling off of the driveway.

This past Sunday I was nearly finished with the chore when an S-shaped stick appeared beneath the swirling top cover of leaves. Wait… a snake? A small garter snake! I called up to my reptile-loving son so he could come see it but, when I looked up, it was my daughter who came jogging down the driveway.

“It’s so cute,” she said.

“Where’s your brother?” I asked.

“He’s in the shower,” she said.

“He’s gonna want to see this. Bring down a box and we’ll put the snake in it so we can show him.”

She hustled up to the house and back down with a cardboard box. There had been a recent drop in temperatures and the snake was slow moving. My daughter gently lifted the snake off the driveway and placed it in the box.

We carried it back to the house, where my husband came out to inspect our find. In a few minutes, my son came outside as well. For a boy who loves snake books and reptile shows and wants to be a herpetologist when he grows up, a snake in a box in the driveway was on par with Christmas. Perhaps better, since he always asks Santa for a pet snake without success. (Last year, he slipped a few extra bucks under the cookie plate hoping a bribe might help the Big Guy come through.)

The small snake enjoyed the warmth of my son’s hands and was becoming more active, and besides spraying his snakey stink the newly named “Fluffy” seemed quite content to wrap himself around hands and fingers and crawl up our arms. 

All was well and I walked down the driveway to finish my yard work. It is hard to hear anything over a blower but a minute later there was a cry that overpowered my 64-decibel tool. I turned the blower off to the sound of my daughter howling and my husband yelling for me to come back and help.

I ran back up the driveway and soon deciphered that within the span of a few minutes there had been a discussion, turned debate, turned disagreement about how long to keep “Fluffy.” And somewhere along that journey, my daughter had LOST HER MIND. She was hysterical. Crying and gasping for air, undone that we would consider keeping Fluffy for an indefinite amount of time.

As for the boys, it seemed there had been some discussion on creating a suitable habitat and conditions for fluffy and observing him overnight - or longer. But any mention of that… or that my husband once owned a pet snake… or a heat lamp… or appropriate food sources… sent my girl into higher pitches of hysteria. This was going NO WHERE and I was starting to envy Fluffy’s limited hearing ability.  

I pulled my daughter aside and we worked on some breathing to calm down. She rarely pitches a fit and never to this level and so my mom-brain was working through all the extenuating circumstances like middle school and hormones and exhaustion and sugar crashes that could contribute to this exceptional meltdown. My best guess is that maybe it was all swirled up together, but when she finally calmed down, my daughter said, “There’s enough walls, and cages and captivity in the world. If something’s wild, it should stay wild.” And that - at least for her nature loving mama - that was a solid reason for a demonstrative response. (Also maybe subconsciously tied to the fact that her school did away with recess?! But that’s a tangent for another time.)

Here’s the thing, and here’s what I tried to leave my daughter with, passion is so good and so important in life, but passion on full blast in the form of rage or hysterics serves to communicate the emotion and not the underlying cause. And I’m not down-playing the power of an unbridled response. I know that explosive grief, and anger, and injustice have helped me blaze down the trail a time or two but you gotta channel that energy if you want it to get your somewhere. And when the time comes to stand up for those without a voice, we need to be able to hear you and not discount what you’re saying due a roaring, whirling, leaf blower like outpour of emotions.

Because let’s not forget that at the root of the Fluffy debacle is a little boy who loves snakes and a girl with the biggest heart for justice, wildness, and all living things.

“Do you love animals?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“Does your brother love animals?”

“He says he does but I don’t think…”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa… we have been subjected to too many wildlife books, and Wild Kratts shows, and Steve Irwin videos, and Jack Randall, and Coyote Peterson, for you to question this.

“Ok, yes, he loves animals.”

“So if you both love wild animals and you both want the best for this snake, do you think you can work this out?”

“Maybe.”

Fluffy was with us for 24 hours of observation and then released into the urban forest across from our driveway.

Seven days later, I was walking in the neighborhood with my kids and we found Fluffy II, a small ring-neck snake. The snake was observed, gently handled, and after a few minutes and one potent spray of snakey stink he was release without tears, protest, or disagreement. We had already worked all that out.

When it comes to our current political and cultural disagreements and challenges, at the root of it, don’t we all want the same things? Don’t we all want to take care of what we love? Don’t we all want to keep our kids and communities safe and have decent opportunities??

We might disagree on how to accomplish those goals, but if we remember that we are starting from the same place - and if we are able to listen, and speak, and have conversations with productive passion - then maybe, maybe, we can work some of this out.