Today, I came across the same dead snake that I saw yesterday by the pathway. However, unlike yesterday, the dead body seemed to have suffered an additional blow or two by idle passersby. And as I looked at the thin tiny body of the young black snake with a white belly, I marveled at the unconscious fear that many people have about snakes.

Like many other people, I was taught that a snake is dangerous at a very young age. I learnt that each time a person encounters a snake, it should be killed instantly by hitting its head with a stick or a stone. Have you ever tried to kill a snake? The body of a snake seems to have life in every cell, and hitting the head only makes the rest of the body writhe in pain. It is not until you pound every inch of its long body that the poor creature will eventually stop meandering itself. I think this is the true meaning of over-kill.

My lessons went ahead to instruct me to burn the carcass of a snake. This was for two reasons; One, lest it had eggs in its stomach that would later hatch into more snakes. Up to this day, I am not even sure whether that actually happens. The second reason was advanced by a person who managed to convince most people that a snake would come to life if another snake slithered over its dead body. Only by burning the body of a snake to ashes would ensure that it was gone completely. The lesson in the fear of the snake was so effective that encountering a snake, watching snakes on television, or even thinking about a snake was guaranteed to bring nightmares.

Of course you know what the snake did. According to the Christian Bible, God condemned the snake to die each time it is encountered by a human being since it made the mistake of deceiving Eve into eating the forbidden fruit. And I suppose that the reason why humans kill the snake with so much gusto is the fact that were it not for that deception, we would not have to work for a living, we would not die, and women would have painless birth. And since that blunder by the snake ancestor, apart from being condemned to crawl on its belly, no snake has had peace on earth on account of man’s vengeance.

It was not until I met a South African man called Stretch that my perception about snakes was challenged. Stretch is so comfortable with snakes that I once saw him pick a snake from the ground with bare hands and drop it down the front of his shirt. I could see it struggling against his belly under his cotton shirt as it tried to escape. Hanging out with Stretch made me become curious about the world of snakes, and I even learnt that only a very small percentage of snakes are poisonous enough to kill. And although that didn’t make me fear snakes any less, now I wouldn’t readily kill a snake as I might have done years ago.

Thinking of the dead young snake pulverized by the roadside reminds me of the saying ‘The sins of the father have visited the son’. For indeed, the snake is not the only descendant that is misunderstood because its ancestor did wrong. What fault would a child born into a war ravaged Iraq have done to warrant a life of trauma it might live for the rest of its life? What about the young boys and girls being maimed daily in Israel and Palestine? And the millions of kids who will go hungry due to drought in Africa as a result catastrophic man made changes in the world climate?

Perhaps if each person asked himself or herself what wrong a snake did to him or her before striking it with a stick, then perhaps a consciousness would be born that would wipe out most of the world’s suffering.