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There are two rules when dealing with pythons:
1) Always carry a fid and, 2) Don’t get strangled.
Neither of which helped one particular day...
I always volunteered to tend the animals nobody else liked: alligators,
bees, rattlesnakes. Which is why, among other duties, I had to
clean and feed 16 pythons.
This was an old zoo. The only cage access to the Python House was
through a short tunnel at the back. I crawled in on hands and
knees. The pythons ranged from six to eighteen feet long.
Pythons aren’t poisonous, but they can bite, and since they’re
basically one huge long muscle, can strangle if you’re not
careful. Pre-OSHA, there were two safety rules around pythons.
First, if they bite, their fishhook teeth will just keep inching
deeper. So, the first rule was, always carry a blunt fid (or
dowel) that you can jam into their mouth if they bite. Something
hard wiggling against their palate makes them let go, so you can escape.
Second rule, don’t get strangled. A
python kills prey by wrapping and constricting. With every breath
the victim takes, the patient python tightens, until suffocation sets
in. So, if a python lands on you, immediately shove one arm up
alongside your neck. That way you can’t be strangled, and can
walk to the Elephant House where someone can untangle the snake.
Easy, really. Just pay attention.
Once I didn’t pay attention.
Having crawled into the python house, my job was simple. There
was a pool, a gnarled tree bolted to the wall, sand, and piles of
sleeping pythons. Scoop python shit into a bucket, dump pythons
out of the pool (they like to lie in water), shovel up more shit, drain
the pool, scrub the sides and rinse, refill the pool. Mostly the
pythons sleep and you can nudge them aside.
Except there come times in a python’s life - no one know why - when
they get cranky and attack anything that moves. Zookeepers, for
instance.
One day I was blithely scrubbing the pool - and not paying attention - when I felt a WHIFF!
across my neck. Like a baseball passing. Or a bullet.
Looking up, I saw a python rearing back to lunge and bite.
A snake can hurl itself for one-half its length. So a six-foot
rattler can throw itself three feet. This python, currently
cranky, had climbed the tree. He must have been twelve feet,
because he coiled back and - very angry - LUNGED like a ballistic
missle to bite me.
I scrambled backwards out the tunnel. And worked elsewhere until Mr Meany calmed down.
Later, there was no sign of any python aggression. I crawled back
in and scrubbed the pool. But now the zoo is open, so I have an
audience of parents and kids. “Hey, look at the guy in there with
all those snakes!” I waved bravely and kept scrubbing.
Scrub, look, scrub, look, scrub - and heard a murmur from the audience.
Here he comes. The same python slithered up into the tree and came at me, coiling to lunge -
I glared as I crawled out the tunnel. “Stay put, you son of a bitch. I’ll be right back.”
Ducking into the Reptile Office, I grabbed a capture noose. An
aluminum pole with a padded noose at one end. You yank the cord
from the opposite end. And a burlap bag.
Back into the python house. There’s The Terror, hanging in the tree, waiting for trouble.
He got it. The snake lunged. I flipped the noose over his head and YANKED.
Now I had a giant snake - one huge muscle - by the neck. Enraged and
fighting back. Like hooking a shark. I pulled, he pulled, I
yanked, he yanked, the tree rocked, the house shook and finally -
SLAM! the python hit the sand. Into the sack he goes. The
bag kicks, bumps, writhes. “Ha, ha, you snaky bastard! Take
that!” Kick, bump, thrash. Snaky hisses turned the air
blue. The audience goggled.
Next step. What to do with an angry python? Ground
him. Plunk a tropical snake on a cold cement floor and he cools
right down.
I carried the squirming bag back to the Reptile Office, opened an empty display case, dumped the snake, and slammed the lid.
Oooh... Angry? That snake coiled, lunged, and - WHAM!
smacked into the glass. Again. WHAM! Again.
WHAM! I set the case on the counter and left before he knocked
himself silly. The room was cool and kept dark, and he’d calm
down soon.
I worked other chores for a few hours. Until Jeff came staggering along.
I say “staggering” because he was white-faced and shambled like a
zombie from DAWN OF THE DEAD, even to holding his arms straight
out. His hands clawed onto my shirt front.
“Did - Did -” Jeff gargled, “Did you put that snake on the counter in the Reptile Office?”
“Snake... Snake...” I reflected. His claws were pinching my skin. “Uh, I might have. Why do you ask?”
“I - I - I went into - the office - to get something - and saw - from
the corner of my eye - a python leap at me! I - jumped so high -
I cleared the middle table - and crashed on the floor!”
“Gee, uh, Jeff, I’m - sorry to - hear that.” I was very sincere
in trying not to laugh. “I, uh, wish I’d seen that jump.
Hee, hee, hee.”
“Get - that - snake - out -”
“Sure, sure. No problem.”
Next day, in the Reptile Office, I found Mr Meany fast asleep. A
nudge produced no reaction. He was torpid. Fine. I
slid our friend into a burlap sack and toted it to the Python
House. Crawled in, dumped the snake out PLOP on the sand. No aggression. Crisis over.
I circled around to join the fascinated audience who’d watched the snake's reentry.
“Where was he?” asked a mom.
“Isolated. Acting too aggressive.” Toward me, but never mind.
“What’s that brown stuff coming out of his mouth?” a kid asked.
“Brown stuff?”
I looked. The snake was drooling an
obscene amount of bile or sputum or blood or some gook. I
thought, “Oh, Christ, I broke his neck!”
The kid persisted, “What’s that brown stuff?”
“Oh,” I replied, “that’s just something they do now and then.” And I split.
Came back an hour later. No dead snakes. Plenty of live
ones, all asleep. Our friend must've crawled off to sleep among
his buddies. Crisis over, again.
Except for some limp white bags lying on the sand. What the heck
are those? Eggs? Rocks? White snake shit? Alien
artifacts? I studied them through the glass, then figured it
out. “Ah! Gotta pull those.”
Circling, crawling, I climbed back in the den with a burlap bag.
A dad and his kid watched me pick up the white blobs and stuff them
inside.
Dad had to ask. “What are those?”
“What are what?” I adroitly replied.
“Those white things.”
“What white things?”
“The white things in your hand.”
“Oh.” I rotated a white thing in my hand. “THESE white things. You want to know what these are.”
“Yes,” insisted Dad.
“You sure?” asked I.
“Uh... Yeah.”
I held a white egg-shape close to the glass for a good look.
“These are - These are - These are puked-up guinea pigs.”
“Oh,” said Dad. And to his son, “Johnny, let’s go look at the seals.”
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