I never liked
snakes. I would see them in their
enclosures, look at them the way one looks at violence or blood, horrified and
yet compelled, staring, just a moment longer before I looked away. There is talk of reptilian brains; we all
have one we’re told. I imagine a snake
head somewhere behind my eyes, a jealous viper who would swallow my enemies
rather than forgive. What did the snake
do to be so maligned? He wields a forked
tongue. He tempted Eve to eat the
apple. And now he is lodged inside my mammalian
brain, willing me to return to the jungle: fight or flight.
But I have seen the
snake make love. Yes, make love. I stood on a path not five feet away and
watched: the female, supine, arched, her
pale belly exposed, the male’s head
moving, stroking her from head to tail.
“The female must be aroused,” the docent tells us, “in order to
copulate. He can’t enter her until she’s
aroused. It’s physically impossible.”
And so the snake makes love, not panting doggie love, but seduction, oblivious
to the voyeurs on the path. The male twines
around the female as the snake catcher arrives with bag and pole. “He’ll take the female first,” the docent
says, and the catcher disengages the female, loops her, and stuffs her in the
bag. Choosing neither fight nor flight, the
male springs into the bag behind her. What went through his reptilian brain? What drove his passion that he would risk
entrapment to be with his love?
Some would say the art
of seduction evolved with the proliferation of the species; female snakes
cannot be raped. Clumsy lovers died out
long ago. But I will not see my
reptilian Romeo demystified. I imagine
the lovers in Eden, two vertebrates entwined. I stare, just a moment longer, before I look away.
The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
