Love You Dead

So just how different are we humans from snakes? Like, here’s an intriguing mathematical puzzle: Cows share twenty-five per cent of their genes with snakes. Humans share eighty per cent of their genes with cows. So we share about twenty per cent of ours with snakes.

I reckon that percentage is a lot higher in some people. There are some seriously reptilian people out there.

Snake charmers use a musical instrument called a Pungi. It’s a wind instrument made from a gourd with reed pipes. But snake charmers have removed either the fangs or the venom glands, and some sew the mouth shut. The charmer sits out of biting range because the snakes actually consider the charmer and the Pungi a threat.

It’s all a con.

You just have to turn to the Bible. Psalm 58, verses 3–5: ‘The wicked turn aside from birth; liars go astray as soon as they are born. Their venom is like that of a snake, like a deaf serpent that does not hear, that does not respond to the magicians, or to a skilled snake charmer.’

I can tell you another thing that snakes don’t like — I learned it from my late husband, Christopher Bentley, keeper of snakes and expert on poisonous creatures in general. And that is having their venom extracted.

It’s an incredible sensation! You hold the snake — in my case a saw-scaled viper — with your fingers, right behind its head, and press it down on a hard surface. I can tell you, it really does not like this. But if you keep the pressure up, in the right place, at the top of its neck, on the edge of a glass beaker, it spits its venom out. This is not a great way to make friends with a snake — but the reality is, none of us, ever, will become buddies with a creature that will only ever view you as one thing — lunch!

Kill or be killed. It’s the story of the animal kingdom. And of the human race. If you want to be a survivor you must, like me, follow in the path of Ka, who said, ‘Life is not a matter of chance... it’s a matter of choice.’

I made my choice. It’s all working out pretty well.