“See there, Minerva! He wants to show you that he is perfectly friendly.”
“My, aint he clean!”
“Of course he’s clean. Snakes are all the while washing themselves with their tongues.” I caught Ethel’s eye, and felt that my natural history was shaky, but I wanted to make an interesting story for Minerva, and who cares for facts in natural history, so long as you have something that will be read?
“I dare say that at one time snakes and cats belonged to the same family. When you see a cat crouched down and creeping along after a bird, it looks like a snake. Its head is flattened and its ears are laid back and its tail looks just like a snake in itself. Probably snakes once had fur—”
“And they rubbed it all off creepin’ ’round.”
“Exactly. Now, take this little snake and be kind to him and overcome your antipathy to him—”
As I said this I loosened my hold on him, preparatory to handing him to Minerva.
But instead of going to Minerva, he turned and made his way swiftly up my arm and around my neck.
Ugh. I never felt anything so creepy in my life. I flung him from me (with a wild cry, Ethel says, although I think she is mistaken). At any rate I tossed the snake far from me, and he made his sinuous, chilly, gliding, repulsive way to his waiting family. And probably wrote a book on the bad habits of human beings from his short and superficial observation of them.
There is a certain rooted antipathy to snakes that lies deep at the base of our being. I cannot explain it, but I know it’s there. I am no snake charmer.