The Voice of Conscience and Consequences
A naturalist that I knew down at the neighborhood Nature Center told me in no uncertain terms what he thought of hobbyists keeping snakes as pets. The thing is that I agreed with everything that Terry said. It was immoral. The snakes were better left in their natural environments, wherever in the world that may be, as should all wild creatures – and their natural environments needed to be kept in their natural environment. But don’t be part of the problem, he advised me. Terry loved to give us advice to us young bucks of the Young Adult Conservation Corp – YACC. He thought of himself as an everyman, as the guy standing with the little people. He was the kind of guy who would speak about “the people” with total sincerity
Adopt a dog at the pound if you want an animal, he advised finally.
So late in the evening I went to the pet store and bought this tiny little baby red rat snake. Orange and red and black and mostly white underneath and very tiny even for a baby red rat snake.
I knew that what I was doing was wrong and I did it anyway – there it is, evil such as it is for us humans. I bought an aquarium, reptile heater, a bag of pine bedding, baby mouse – yes, a baby mouse called a “pinky” because it’s the size of your pinky and extremely pink. Buddha was right on about this stuff. It’s all about desire, our weird, quirky, rude, lost desires that lead us astray, lead us to do what we know that we should not do. They should come with a sign reading: Warning, Desire. But I wanted a colorful little snake and that was that. Truly, there was quiet voice within that spoke quite clearly in the form of conscience and this inner voice told me that what I was doing was wrong. But I literally ignored it – pushed it down, pushed it away, this protest of conscience.
The little rat snake was too emaciated to survive but I didn’t know that. Of course I eventually asked Terry for his advice. After he told me how disappointed that he was in me, he told me to cut a smaller pinky in half with a pair of scissors and force feed the little bastard, warning me that it would probably not do any good at all. When I made a face he got a little pissed, “hey, you bought the thing now you have to do everything you can to help it survive, no time for squeamishness now, Dad,” he scolded cynically. And I searched the pet store for the smallest pinky that I could get and took it home and cut it in half with a pair of scissors and it was like some horrible punishment for my transgression as I applied even pressure to the scissors slicing the extremely pink and squirming baby mouse in half. This went on for weeks with the rare occasion when the little red rat snake wouldn’t throw up his gruesome meal.
When the snake finally died it was a relief. It was over. Of course our evil is never over since it is part of us, as a river is itself around every bend. The beautiful little Red Rat snake continues on with me now along with its dark gift of reminding me where evil resides and how real are its consequences.