Rattle Snake

 

(26) Rattle Snake

4-2-93 by Fazeel Chauhan

When I was in Abbottabad, I was about 15 years old. Still a young boy. One day, my best friend Javed and I were walking to the Cafeteria to get some food. On the side of the road is a "V" shaped water drainage area. It's made of concrete and is like an open pipe, that runs along the road to move the rain water so the area doesn't get flooded.

I heard the movement of some dry leaves. This sound was coming from the drain. I kind of ignored it. But the rattling of the leaves also caught Javed's attention. So we casually walked toward the edge of the road and looked down at the two feet deep drain. In the backs of our minds, we were expecting something "harmless" like a frog or something. But we were shocked and scared to see a big snake there, moving ahead, inside this drain. At this unexpected sight, we panicked. Javed got a rock and tried to hit it with the intention of killing the snake. He was brownish, with some black marks. He was kind of fat and around six or seven feet long. Poor guy, it was not his day. Both Javed and I were scared on one hand, that the snake may bite us. On the other hand, at some level we thought we had to get rid of this pest so that it won't kill anyone else. We threw several rocks at it. Even though we were above it and very close to it, we could not hit him and kept missing. Poor soul, he probably was harmless and just wanted to be left alone.

By now, a few other kids stopped as they were passing by, to see what the excitement was all about. One of them also searched around and found some rocks, which he threw at the snake. Eventually, the snake was hit a couple of times but was not killed. One of the workers showed up and we left the matter to him. I hope the snake was killed and not left injured and in pain like that.

In those days, I thought of all snakes as dangerous and poisonous. In fact I remember a book I had read which talked about famous people who had been killed by different kinds of snakes. But the picture that had been drawn in my mind was not a valid one. Now I've learned that the snake, as all the other animals, has its own beauty and its own purpose. There are many kinds of snakes and most of them are non-poisonous. I have seen serpents which are non-poisonous and are not harmful to humans. In general, the idea about snakes is that they will not bother human beings, unless the human beings bother them first. For example, if a person goes into a cave, which may be a snake's home, he is likely to get bitten if the man happens to stumble on the snake.

Man is the most dangerous animal, a much worse killer than a snake. Don't you agree? We are the ones who kill our own kind, which very few animals do. We are the ones destroying the forests, the oceans, and all the animals and plant life in them. We are the ones polluting the oceans and the land, and even outer space. But... that's a long story in itself....