snakes in the mall
Snakes in the mall
One day I waltzed into a Florida mall and came upon a live demonstration by a snake handler who was entertaining a couple hundred shoppers. He initially played with the crowd by hanging several harmless varieties of reptiles off of his limbs like ornaments on a tree. This rather odd soul flung snakes around all over the stage area, jerked and stumbled into things, cackled maniacally, and cracked one-liners about how nervous this work made him after all these years, having been bitten numerous times by deadly reptiles because of his jumpy and accident-prone nature.
I noticed those on the front row step back a bit, especially when he informed them that he was now going to transition to the venomous category. Further apprehension seized everyone when he dramatically approached an ominous black box and seemed to insert his hand rather cavalierly into the dark space. Whatever was in there must have taken affront and lunged at his obtrusive hand because he catapulted backwards and nearly off the stage when he jerked his hand away like a bolt of lightning. Tense murmurs of concern ascended from the crowd, and they stepped back again. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck rise.
Shifting my feet, I looked around at others to see if anyone was as anxious as I had become. People were gazing all about them shaking their heads and lifting their eyebrows. Some bozo behind me had a kid with a balloon that grazed my bare arm and the hair that was standing erect on it. Startled by the thought of a snake touching me, I blasted out a terror scream into the ears of the old man in front of me and at the same time latched onto his shoulders as if I had been in the dark with Dracula. He was nearly seized with a heart attack and immediately recalled a frequently-rehearsed combination of curse words with a distinct reference to a relationship I had with my mother. This snake handler had the whole crowd on edge.
In the meantime, the reptile moron had already snagged another viper from a glass case. It was a thick, adult moccasin, and he was carelessly waving it around on the end of a hook close to the spectators who were leaning and edging back. There was something very wrong with this atmosphere because the black thing at the end of the pole would rocket off the end of the stick and just miss this idiot by mere inches. The crowd was now screaming and was highly agitated, which increased the size of the audience all the more. But I noticed that some people - including the old man in front of me who had the crap scared out of him - were leaving the exhibition.
And for good reason. The handler threw the snake to the floor and began to taunt it with the pole. Writhing and coiling on the stage with its powerful neck cocked like a trigger, it straightened like an arrow and slammed its wide, white mouth down on his steel-toed boot and splashed a copious load of venom onto the platform. This was to demonstrate how much venom a moccasin had, said he. He just laughed. I wondered why an idiot like this was loose in public.
He got the moccasin back into it glass container and then wheeled instantly and stabbed his shaking, BARE hand into the previous black wooden box from which he had just withdrawn it as if pulling it from the grinding wheels of a piece of industrial equipment. In a flash, he withdrew a hideous, arm-thick, diamond-patterned brute into the light. Why this fool was so hasty I’ll never know because it was evident the moment he withdrew it that he didn’t have a handle on this fiend. It wriggled violently and churned out of control. The two were in a death struggle for mastery as this man’s hands were trying to find a safe place to land and grip the rattler into submission. Lifting it higher and higher, he tried to keep the venomous fangs from striking him in the face. Hundreds of incredulous eyes were locked on the long, full-length thrusts of the snake’s body at the neck and countenance of the terrified handler. Realizing he could not contain it any longer without being struck, he fired the viper up over his head with all his might to try and save himself. In so doing, he threw it backwards over his head and over the top of the incredulous crowd.
This all took place within seconds, but it all looked and felt much longer as if in slow motion as the crowd parted like the Red Sea to make way for the serpent that sailed over them like a rope. Unbelievably, the ophidian landed on and around the aged and bent shoulders of a senior citizen who was standing in the rear and was already making for the exit when she saw the airborne reptile heading in her direction. The church I pastored was full of senior citizens. So I knew their frail and laborious ways. But the presence of a diamond back upon your trapezius has healing power that can only be described as divine in its effect. No sooner had the heavy, cold-blooded flesh been stopped by her neck like a horseshoe around an iron stake than the realization that the most loathsome creation known to mankind was upon her came to her with full force and transformed her into Bruce Lee and a MMA Cage Fighter. An instantaneous fountain of youth, a drug rush, and enough adrenalin to lift an automobile all rolled into one hit her in a split second. Ignited into flight or fight, she nearly ripped off her dress, drawers, and brassiere as she chopped, bucked, flailed, kicked, spun, leaped, screamed, jumped, arched, vaulted, twisted, and cursed like Uma Thurman surrounded by an army of Chinese ninjas in Kill Bill II.
Long after the creature had dropped off her and to the floor, she continued to hack at the air nearly naked to rid herself of the mental image of the deadly burden and the repugnant thought of it. Realizing at last the thing was off her and sensing her safety, trembling and drained, she began to gather herself by inspecting her arms for fang marks and then bent over thoroughly exhausted and wrought with terror as she tried to regain her composure. The crowd, standing back and watching the spectacle like Germans witnessing the SS persecute a Jew, was silent for the poor woman. A younger lady in the crowd cautiously crept up behind her to see how she fared. The mere light touch of her hand upon the woman’s bristling back was just enough to make the victim think the reptile was upon her afresh and set the old woman off again with a shriek, jackknifing across the mall with a hail of epithets and profanity upon the snake, the mall, the heavens, the state of Florida, her dead husband who brought her here against her will, and the place below. Most of the crowd of several hundred had already shot down the mall like missiles, stampeding over one another and making their own doors to get out of there. But the repulsive creature on the floor failed to move again. As I cautiously walked over to look at the asp lying listlessly on the Mall’s tile, It was then that I realized that the vile and despicable serpent was only rubber.
I noticed those on the front row step back a bit, especially when he informed them that he was now going to transition to the venomous category. Further apprehension seized everyone when he dramatically approached an ominous black box and seemed to insert his hand rather cavalierly into the dark space. Whatever was in there must have taken affront and lunged at his obtrusive hand because he catapulted backwards and nearly off the stage when he jerked his hand away like a bolt of lightning. Tense murmurs of concern ascended from the crowd, and they stepped back again. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck rise.
Shifting my feet, I looked around at others to see if anyone was as anxious as I had become. People were gazing all about them shaking their heads and lifting their eyebrows. Some bozo behind me had a kid with a balloon that grazed my bare arm and the hair that was standing erect on it. Startled by the thought of a snake touching me, I blasted out a terror scream into the ears of the old man in front of me and at the same time latched onto his shoulders as if I had been in the dark with Dracula. He was nearly seized with a heart attack and immediately recalled a frequently-rehearsed combination of curse words with a distinct reference to a relationship I had with my mother. This snake handler had the whole crowd on edge.
In the meantime, the reptile moron had already snagged another viper from a glass case. It was a thick, adult moccasin, and he was carelessly waving it around on the end of a hook close to the spectators who were leaning and edging back. There was something very wrong with this atmosphere because the black thing at the end of the pole would rocket off the end of the stick and just miss this idiot by mere inches. The crowd was now screaming and was highly agitated, which increased the size of the audience all the more. But I noticed that some people - including the old man in front of me who had the crap scared out of him - were leaving the exhibition.
And for good reason. The handler threw the snake to the floor and began to taunt it with the pole. Writhing and coiling on the stage with its powerful neck cocked like a trigger, it straightened like an arrow and slammed its wide, white mouth down on his steel-toed boot and splashed a copious load of venom onto the platform. This was to demonstrate how much venom a moccasin had, said he. He just laughed. I wondered why an idiot like this was loose in public.
He got the moccasin back into it glass container and then wheeled instantly and stabbed his shaking, BARE hand into the previous black wooden box from which he had just withdrawn it as if pulling it from the grinding wheels of a piece of industrial equipment. In a flash, he withdrew a hideous, arm-thick, diamond-patterned brute into the light. Why this fool was so hasty I’ll never know because it was evident the moment he withdrew it that he didn’t have a handle on this fiend. It wriggled violently and churned out of control. The two were in a death struggle for mastery as this man’s hands were trying to find a safe place to land and grip the rattler into submission. Lifting it higher and higher, he tried to keep the venomous fangs from striking him in the face. Hundreds of incredulous eyes were locked on the long, full-length thrusts of the snake’s body at the neck and countenance of the terrified handler. Realizing he could not contain it any longer without being struck, he fired the viper up over his head with all his might to try and save himself. In so doing, he threw it backwards over his head and over the top of the incredulous crowd.
This all took place within seconds, but it all looked and felt much longer as if in slow motion as the crowd parted like the Red Sea to make way for the serpent that sailed over them like a rope. Unbelievably, the ophidian landed on and around the aged and bent shoulders of a senior citizen who was standing in the rear and was already making for the exit when she saw the airborne reptile heading in her direction. The church I pastored was full of senior citizens. So I knew their frail and laborious ways. But the presence of a diamond back upon your trapezius has healing power that can only be described as divine in its effect. No sooner had the heavy, cold-blooded flesh been stopped by her neck like a horseshoe around an iron stake than the realization that the most loathsome creation known to mankind was upon her came to her with full force and transformed her into Bruce Lee and a MMA Cage Fighter. An instantaneous fountain of youth, a drug rush, and enough adrenalin to lift an automobile all rolled into one hit her in a split second. Ignited into flight or fight, she nearly ripped off her dress, drawers, and brassiere as she chopped, bucked, flailed, kicked, spun, leaped, screamed, jumped, arched, vaulted, twisted, and cursed like Uma Thurman surrounded by an army of Chinese ninjas in Kill Bill II.
Long after the creature had dropped off her and to the floor, she continued to hack at the air nearly naked to rid herself of the mental image of the deadly burden and the repugnant thought of it. Realizing at last the thing was off her and sensing her safety, trembling and drained, she began to gather herself by inspecting her arms for fang marks and then bent over thoroughly exhausted and wrought with terror as she tried to regain her composure. The crowd, standing back and watching the spectacle like Germans witnessing the SS persecute a Jew, was silent for the poor woman. A younger lady in the crowd cautiously crept up behind her to see how she fared. The mere light touch of her hand upon the woman’s bristling back was just enough to make the victim think the reptile was upon her afresh and set the old woman off again with a shriek, jackknifing across the mall with a hail of epithets and profanity upon the snake, the mall, the heavens, the state of Florida, her dead husband who brought her here against her will, and the place below. Most of the crowd of several hundred had already shot down the mall like missiles, stampeding over one another and making their own doors to get out of there. But the repulsive creature on the floor failed to move again. As I cautiously walked over to look at the asp lying listlessly on the Mall’s tile, It was then that I realized that the vile and despicable serpent was only rubber.