Imagine that, in casual conversation, you espoused to me that you were especially fond of stamps and that you had spent the vast majority of your child hood rummaging through garage sales, fossicking through primary school nick-nak stalls and perusing antique shows all over the country side in pursuit of the 'holy grail' for your collection. Now, how do you think you might feel if I told you that I found it very amusing to purchase stamp collections en mass, pile them up in a little heap and set fire to them. I expect you would be rather upset.
Or consider how you might feel if you told me that you had, since you were a child, been most passionate about breeding the cutest kittens on the planet to voluntarily gift to other children less fortunate that yourself; that you derived so much joy knowing that you had passed on to someone else something that gave you so much joy. How would you feel if I whipped out my iPhone to show you a recent video of someone belting a kitten with a shovel. I expect you would be extremely distraught and want to: a) punch me in the face, or b) report me to the police.
Spare a thought for me then. On more occasions than I care to remember, whilst chatting to people (more often, but not always strangers) about my love for snakes these people are suddenly overcome with a perversely insatiable desire to tell me about how brutally they killed the last snake that they encountered. Even when I state, with all the fortitude and resilience I can muster, that I do not want to hear what they have to say, they insist on telling me!!! How is it that people see this as a reasonable conversation to engage in?
Are they just expressing themselves in an effort to relate to me; this being the only way?
If a pilot was telling me a scary story of how he/she navigated through a Category 5 cyclone I may respond by recounting how terrified I was when, as a passenger on a light aircraft, I had to circle Perth airport in a thunderstorm for what seemed like hours. I am totally naive when it comes to aircraft and what they are capable of in the hands of a skilled pilot. My being a passenger is hardly comparable to the experiences of the pilot in same situation, but by virtue of being in a conversation one must speak, the other must listen then recount or respond.
I wish it were that simple: if it were, then perhaps my faith in human nature could be restored somewhat. But I suspect that people's fear and loathing for snakes is so visceral and intrinsic in their nature that they honestly feel that killing snakes is fair, just and reasonable; and perhaps they feel it is equally appropriate to share their story with another person, whether that person wants to hear it or not.
Once someone told me that they had managed to coerce a large Dugite (a venomous elapid snake distributed throughout the south-west of Western Australia and particularly common in urbanised areas) into a bin as they had encountered the snake in their house. Not knowing what to do with it, once captured and contained, they saw fit to pour boiling water on it until it was dead. Who is less highly evolved: the snake or the person that killed it?
How very sad to have to resign oneself to the conclusion that the vast majority of humans are possibly incapable of changing their attitude toward snakes.
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